DM News: Yahoo Proposes E-Mail ID System
Whitfield Diffie,
public key enabler
With a clever use of public key encryptions, Yahoo is forwarding a potential solution to the unknown sender conundrum. Currently, email recipients cannot determine for sure whether or not email coming from a domain - for instance, www.bankone.com - is really from that domain, or merely someone spoofing it.
Yahoo is suggesting that each email come with half of a code, which can then be matched up with the other half that would be published with a domain registry in order to ascertain that the product of the two matched the necessary number of the real domain owner. Since the two parts of the code are very long prime numbers, it is practically impossible for today's computers to crack it in any reasonable period of time. This has been the basis of the Internet's most respected and most implemented security system: public key encryption.
DM News reports that "E-mail marketers reacted with cautious optimism to the Yahoo proposal while stressing the need for details before determining whether the system would benefit legitimate senders." Which translates, roughly, to "We're waiting to see if it becomes easy for commercial email to get filtered, in which case, we'll say we think it's a travesty."
