Anti-spam work takes time

Experts last week warned that email authentication initiatives outlined recently by Microsoft and Yahoo are unlikely to do much to reduce spam until at least 2006. In the meantime, firms should instead rely on developing their own trusted email exchange models.

Microsoft announced its Caller ID for Email proposal last month, to help companies authenticate email senders by verifying senders' IP addresses against DNS listings.

Gartner research director Arabella Hallawell warned via the firm's web site that the availability of multiple authentication specs, including Caller ID for Email and Yahoo Domain Keys, would impede adoption of the technology. She added that the need for IT upgrades and intra-enterprise work would also slow uptake. Hallawell said regulated industries would probably be faster to adopt email authentication systems, but estimated that under a quarter of companies will use the standards by the end of 2005.

In light of this forecast, Gartner advised firms to develop their own trust models for exchanging emails with partners and customers, and to put pressure on anti-spam vendors to allow the easier establishment and enforcement of policies. The firm predicted there would not be significant reductions in the volume of spam until at least 2006.

However, key ISPs are trying to overcome the problems of multiple authentication solutions, according to Robert Sanders, chief systems architect of Earthlink.

"We're working together [with Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL] to review solutions. There will probably be some multiplication, but we are willing to co-operate." He added that the technology already exists for such authentication systems. "The question now is how to share the information among ISPs," he said.

The news comes as new research shows that spam levels in the UK have risen despite an anti-spam law introduced in December. The new law makes it illegal in many cases to send email from a business to an individual without their permission, but it does not apply to any unsolicited emails sent from outside the EU, which make up the vast majority of spam.

Security specialist MessageLabs said that in January, 76.4 percent of spam emails to UK addresses originated from computers in the US, and predicted this figure would rise to 79.3 percent this month.