Microsoft's anti spam tactics caned

Found on The Inquirer on Thursday, 23 June 2005
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Despite the fact that Microsoft is practically forcing ISPs to adopt its Sender ID anti-spam methods, Sysadmins and network professionals don’t believe it will work.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, most of the people it interviewed about the latest Volish moves were sceptical that such pressure would work. Yesterday, Microsoft threatened to block mail access to its glorious Hotmail free email service if the mail didn't have Sender ID tags.

But Melbourne-based IT consultant Craig Sanders told the Herald that if Vole starts doing that, then most legitimate mail would be classed as junk.

Sanders said that there was no way that Vole could force everyone to use their proprietary and patented Sender ID proposal because the net didn't work like that.

Computer Associates researcher Jakub Kaminski said that Volish plans to reduce spam using Sender ID would not work, because the early adopters of the system were the spammers.

It's not that easy to bully the majority of the Internet, especially since MS holds patents on it. If SenderID would become standard, they could one day decide to make people pay. Right now, I don't care if Hotmail drops my emails; after all, their mailservice is nothing more than a spambox; if you have to provide an email address, but don't want to (like for "subscription required" forums/websites), you use Hotmail.