P.C. Shannon

I just read this article about Yahoo and Sendmail teaming up to verify the identity of e-mail senders. This is a big issue for spammers, who often forge their indentities. Incidentally, that’s how e-mail borne viruses spread, too. If you get a message from Joe containing a virus, it most likely was not sent by Joe. Viruses these days spoof the sender’s address, the same way spammers do. Spammers just fake it. But in the case of a virus (and continuing the previous example), it came from from a third person who’s address book had both you and Joe in it. With new measures in place to verify a sender’s identity (which will drastically reduce, but not completely eliminate spam — it will make things a lot easier for filters, too), viruses will no longer be able to spoof the sender’s indentity. While that won’t completely stop viruses (they can just use the real sender’s information), it will make it much easier to track down infected computers, and perhaps even trace viruses back to the original author.