Lackluster Response to SenderID

Sender ID's fading message
Published: August 9, 2005, 4:00 AM PDT
By Joris Evers
[links added]

>At the start of last year, Bill Gates [said]... that the problem of spam would be solved in two years.

But if the Microsoft chairman was betting on Microsoft's Sender ID to play a major role in achieving that goal, it looks like a losing bet.

The Microsoft-backed protocol to identify e-mail senders aims to stem spam and phishing by making it harder for senders to forge their addresses and by improving filtering. So far, though, there's been a lack of adoption by legitimate businesses. ~~
That could spell trouble. Confidence in e-mail is falling, as its abuse for online scams is growing. If legitimate businesses don't sign up for Sender ID or similar technologies, that trend could continue and undermine e-mail's usefulness.

"The majority of the adoption has been by rogue senders trying to get some legitimacy for their messages," said Scott Chasin, the chief technology officer at Denver-based [spam-filtering company] MX Logic.
~~
The move was only the latest for Microsoft, which has been pushing for widespread e-mail authentication since Gates unveiled the predecessor to the current Sender ID specification in February 2004. But the effort has had its critics. Some have accused the Redmond, Wash., software giant of trying to strong-arm the industry into accepting Sender ID, especially given its warning that Hotmail may treat unauthenticated messages as spam.