E-mail Authentication Technology Released under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise

WebKnowHow
Thursday, October 26, 2006; 07:11 AM

Microsoft Corp. announced that its Sender ID Framework specification for e-mail authentication is now available under the company’s Open Specification Promise (OSP), an irrevocable promise to every individual in the world that they can make use of the covered Microsoft technology  for free.

Microsoft said is committed to working with the IT industry to help protect users and businesses from the blight of online threats. Sender ID, the leading e-mail authentication protocol, aims to help stop the spread of spam, phishing scams, malware and other online exploits in e-mail by helping address domain spoofing, a tactic used in over 95 percent of all exploits where the name in the “To:” line of the e-mail is forged. Approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as an experimental Request for Comment (RFC) this past April, Sender ID gives customers greater certainty about the origin of an e-mail message and enables legitimate senders to more clearly distinguish themselves from spammers and online criminals.

After nearly two years of worldwide deployment to more than 600 million users, Sender ID already enjoys broad industry support. The application of the OSP will promote further industry interoperability by making the e-mail authentication framework more clearly available to the entire Internet ecosystem, including customers, partners, Internet service providers, registrars and the developer community, no matter what model they use — commercial, open source or academic.

“Great progress has already been made on e-mail authentication worldwide, with more than 5 million domain holders adopting Sender ID as a best practice today to help protect brands and counter spam and e-mail exploits,” said Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of the Windows Live Platform Development Group at Microsoft. “There have been lingering questions from some members of the development community about the licensing terms from Microsoft and how those terms may affect their ability to implement Sender ID. By putting Sender ID under the Open Specification Promise, our goal is to put those questions to rest and advance interoperable efforts for online safety worldwide.”

 Sender ID is the third area of technology now available under the OSP. Microsoft first announced the availability of an OSP for Web services specifications in September 2006 and extended the OSP to Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) Image Format specifications earlier in October 2006. Industry and business leaders recognize the critical importance and business value of Sender ID, and are supportive of Microsoft’s move to make the OSP applicable to Sender ID:
   
Microsoft said it continues to work with others in the industry to deliver products that are interoperable by design and provide access to its technologies through such avenues as the open source project for the development of Microsoft Office Open XML and OpenDocument file format translators, technical collaborations with AOL and Yahoo! Inc. for instant messaging interoperability, and the CodePlex community development portal.

More information about Microsoft the list of specifications covered by the OSP  can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp. Information about deploying Sender ID, as well as Sender ID resources and third-party solutions, can be found online at http://www.microsoft.com/senderid.