September 16th, 2004
On heels of IETF ruling, AOL bails on SenderID
That didn’t take long. Within days of the Internet Engineering Task Force giving the ixnay to Microsoft’s proposal for its e-mail authentication standard (to help combat spam), America Online has publicly withdrawn its support for the specification, known as SenderID, as well. In its report, eWeek characterizes AOL’s decision as a "serious setback" for Microsoft. The move is not just a blow to SenderID. In what may be demonstrative of the increasing pressure that open source software has brought to bear on Microsoft, it was also a significant tip of the hat from AOL to the open source community. According to the report, AOL spokesperson Nicholas Graham said "Given recent concerns expressed by the Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF], coupled with the tepid support for Sender ID in the open-source community, AOL has decided to move forward with SPF-only checking on inbound e-mail at this time." SPF is the acronym that describes Meng Weng Wong’s Sender Policy Framework, an already widely supported e-mail authentication specification that is available as open source.
