IETF Approves SPF and Sender-ID

NW writes "According to the records in the IETF's database (here and here), both the SPF and Sender-ID anti-spam proposals were tentatively approved by the IESG (the approval board of the IETF) as experimental standards. It remains to be seen whether any of them will actually put a dent into spam." At the same time, the FTC has opened a central site about email authentication.

Comments

Not about spam, it's about joe-jobs.

[khasim]

Before the rush of posts about how this won't do anything about spam, this is not about spam. This is about stopping spammers from using your address which results in your email servers dealing with the mass of bounces and spam reports from clueless admins.

Of course, only the admins with a clue will correctly implement either of these so ...

There is no "Experimental Standard"

[pyrrhonist]

According to the records in the IETF's database (here and here), both the SPF and Sender-ID anti-spam proposals were tentatively approved by the IESG (the approval board of the IETF) as experimental standards.

There is no such thing as an "experimental standard". The term "experimental" is a "non-standards track maturity level".

See "The Internet Standards Process":

Not every specification is on the standards track. A specification may not be intended to be an Internet Standard, or it may be intended for eventual standardization but not yet ready to enter the standards track. A specification may have been superseded by a more recent Internet Standard, or have otherwise fallen into disuse or disfavor.

Specifications that are not on the standards track are labeled with one of three "off-track" maturity levels: "Experimental", "Informational", or "Historic". The documents bearing these labels are not Internet Standards in any sense.

The IETF has NOT approved either SPF or Sender-ID as an Internet Standard.