Hotmail To Junk Non-Sender-ID Mail

William Robinson writes "If your e-mail does not have a Sender ID, Microsoft wants to junk your message. Somewhere after November, MSN and Hotmail will consider it as spam. Sender ID is a specification for verifying the authenticity of e-mail by ensuring the validity of the server from which the e-mail came. Some experts feel that 'Sender ID' is not an accepted standard and has many shortcomings. Some also feel that Microsoft is trying to strong-arm the industry into the adoption of an incomplete and not accepted standard."

Comments

Only if other ISPs go along with it

[matt_morgan]

This is a trial baloon. If some other big ISPs decide to go along with this, I can see it happening. If nobody else goes along with it, they won't enforce it. No need to panic here.

Who will use hotmail?

[blue_adept]

Hotmail has been on a steady decline every since Microsoft bought it. Just compare it to gmail or yahoo (which you CAN use with almost ANY useragent, even ones that don't support javascript). Most other webmail providers are now more rhobust, with a cleaner interface.

Not to mention you don't have to worry about them trashing your Non-Sender-ID emails.

One little problem: MSN Messenger

[mindaktiviti]

MSN Messenger is the crazy glue that holds together the consumer with the hotmail account. I gave all of my friends gmail accounts which are far superior going by interface alone (and they agree with this). However because they use MSN Messenger they almost always prefer to check their hotmail accounts. What Google needs to do to successfully compete with MSN is to release their own messenger program that's tied in with GMail, only then will it be easier to switch your friends over to another free email service.

Re:Stop using Hotmail

[tomhudson]

... an additional thing to think of - change your signature to the following in gmail:

If you are receiving this at your Hotmail account, please keep in mind that you might not be able to receive it after November, when Microsoft implements YABIS (Yet Another Broken Incompatable Standard).

You may want to switch to a GMail Account or a Yahoo Account if you want to continue receiving emails from non-Microsoft accounts.

See ... Microsoft isn't the only one capable of spreading FUD.

Re:Ambiguous praise

[squiggleslash]

In a world in which it costs $10 to register a new, throwaway, domain, I can assure you that having to "having to" put a fake return-address in your emails is even less necessary than it ever really was.

This is one of those utterly stupid "anti-spam" systems that just creates hastle for legitimate users while failing to take into account the actual effect it'll have on spam. It's moronic, the people proposing it are morons, and anyone blindly supporting it hasn't paid it more than a few seconds of thought.

Want to know why we have so much spam? Why it grows every year? Because the bulk of the "anti-spammers" are too myopic in their hatred of a minor technical problem to encourage and adopt solutions that'll work. Hence the ever increasing attempts to build increasingly ineffectual blacklists and whitelists. Meanwhile, the spammers simply increase the amount of stuff they send, knowing that if only 1% of their messages will get through, they have to send 100x as many messages. The entire thing has become nothing more than a game between anti-spammers creating little intellectual challenges and spammers solving them.

What is Sender-ID? A lemon. It solves the wrong issue. I want to be able to say "Have I given this entity permission to email me?" It says "Well, can't tell you that, but I'll tell you what, this is coming from an entity unwise enough to not protect their domain name with a list of 'legitimate' SMTP servers. So I'll junk it, because I think that's bad practice."

They're breaking email, and they don't care. As long as they can pretend it's the spammers that are at fault, like some thug that breaks all the windows of all the buildings owned by a particular landlord because one of the landlord's tenants in one particular building plays his music loudly at 3 in the morning, they can justify their actions to themselves in a fit of self-righteousness. Fuck 'em, and the horse they rode in on.

Yes, but don't tar SPF with the same brush

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with everything you said (except that you imply that Sender-ID might actually work, when it doesn't) it's important to distinguish between SPF and Sender-ID.

SPFv1 is an anti-forgery system that works. It does not claim do anything whatsoever to stop spam . But, preventing forgery is necessary before you CAN do anything to stop spam (think about it).

SenderID, AKA SPFv2(pra) is an attempt by Microsoft to seize control over an open standard (SPFv1) so that they can control who gets to send email and who doesn't. They claim it prevents forgery (but it doesn't) and that it does not break some forms of forwarding the way SPF does (they lie) and that it is open (actually, they've submarine-patented parts of it) and that it is an anti-spam measure (which it wouldn't be even if it worked).

Once someone really understands these two facts, all becomes clear. The 800-pound gorilla is beating its chest and waving its tiny pecker around, hoping you will be either be afraid enough to adopt MS-controlled SenderID, or outraged enough to not adopt open, useful SPFv1.

For more information you might want to read some SPF-discuss list threads.