The Antidote to Spam: Law or Technology?

Almost a year ago, Internet service providers Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo formed the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (APTA) and undertook to develop technical standards and guidelines that would work for any software or hardware systems in the fight against spam. These ISPs, together with Earthlink, were in the news recently for launching their first joint legal attack against bulk e-mailers under the US Can-Spam Act, see E-TIPSâ„¢ (Vol 2, No 21, March 31, 2004). However, a technical solution may be more effective than a legal one to combat the continuing flood of spam which, it is estimated, makes up 50 to 90 per cent of all e-mail and costs US companies $1 billion per year in security, human resources and productivity. Having taken the crucial step of forming the APTA, ISPs are still struggling to reach a consensus on the best technology standards to be applied to spam. Not surprisingly, individual members have independently developed different technical strategies to deal with the problem. For example, Yahoo's proposed system, "DomainKeys", authenticates an e-mail's author by attaching encrypted "keys" to every e-mail sent. AOL is testing its "Sender Policy Framework" which is designed to change the domain name system (DNS) database so that e-mail servers can publish which IP addresses they use to send mail. ISPs receiving e-mail can instantly verify whether an e-mail in fact originates from where it says it does. Microsoft's "Caller ID for E-mail" is also designed to use the DNS and targets the author of the e-mail. An AOL representative said that the coalition is working to find a common technical approach and that members have agreed to test one another's proposed solutions. However, it seems that a reconciliation of the various solutions may be slow, due in part to the complexity of the problem and a lack of research into the effectiveness of the solutions. In the meantime, the ISPs are resorting to a legal approach to combat spammers. For more information, see: http://news.com.com/2100-7349-5176415.html. Summary by: Clare McCurley