The End of Spam?
Or will a brazen move by Microsoft simply disrupt the world's most popular form of communication?
Thursday, June 30, 2005
BY : Brian Ashe
Delete...Delete...Delete...Delete...Delete...
This has become part of our regular routine when we check our Inbox for messages from Aunt Sally. The deluge of spam has become an expected part of our daily e-mail usage. This frustrating and tiresome issue has threatened to make e-mail a thing of the past if something doesn't happen to stop the onslaught of mortgage offers, sexual dysfunction pills, cheap software, discount watches, scams, viruses, etc.
While the use of spam filtering software has greatly reduced this problem down to a trickle (our spam filters block over 200 messages for each one it lets through) in our Inboxes, it still has a long way to go. What was once a near immediate message delivery system with almost no chance of failure has become much less fool proof and getting even legitimate messages trapped in over-zealous filters has become commonplace.
Because of this, e-mail usage has dropped in recent months after nearly ten years of huge growth. This trend has many worried that if the e-mail system can lose it's place as an important tool for communication, the rest of the Internet based services could follow suit.
So now the most common name in computer operating systems has decided to take a step to eliminate one of the ways that spam gets spread. Microsoft has been working for several years on a specification for verifying the authenticity of e-mail by checking the credentials of the server from which the e-mail came. This method has been dubbed "Sender ID". It requires that mail system administrators add records to identify where mail for their domain can come from.
Microsoft has decided that sometime in November they would require that mail being sent to their MSN or Hotmail users have a Sender ID record or it will be considered spam and put in junk mail folders or deleted. This strong-arm approach has been taken due to a lack of interest in the technology from the majority of the Internet community.
While Microsoft sees this as a credible approach to combat the spam problem, many disagree. The system would bar many legitimate e-mails, not put a significant dent in the proliferation of spam and create expense and work for mail system administrators. For example, many people send mail from home as if coming from their work account and may not be able to use the company's mail server due to it being blocked by their ISP. This scenario can play out a multitude of ways and will affect many mail users.
Bill Gates had issued a statement in January of 2004 that Microsoft would help eliminate the spam problem by 2006. It seems that with this deadline looming, they are taking a controversial course towards this goal. This tack may not bear fruit though. There is great resistance to implementing faulty technology and also from being forced into doing something. It is likely to result in little more than a communication breakdown between Hotmail and MSN and the rest of the world.
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