Spam fighting: authentication of servers

End of the road for SMTP? | CNET News.com

Good ideas, and probably much more thought out than presented here. I proposed a similar server-oriented approach in 2002, via www.faughnan.com/spam.html and usenet postings. There was no response to my proposal, but happily it appears these ideas have had wide circulation in the past year or two. They may still miss some key ideas of my proposal

1. This is reputation management, but it's less onerous than reputation management on individuals. The sending service can choose to apply reputation management internally to its subscribers, but it can use the standard infrastructure every company uses with its customers.

2. This is incremental. There's an incentive for users to switch to sending services that authenticate (First Class mail), the need to keep customers is an incentive for ISPs to implement sending service authentication -- but there's no mandate.