Microsoft to open up its e-mail technology to fight spam

In the fight against spam, Microsoft has announced that they are opening up their specifications for their Sender ID e-mail framework under the Open Specification Promise (OSP).

Sender ID attempts to authenticate the sender's message as originating from the same address it is pretending to come from. It checks the claimed domain name (such as paypal.com) with a list of IP addresses from high-level domain name servers. If the IP address from the e-mail does not match, it is rejected as spam.

The move will make it possible for anyone to build e-mail systems that use Sender ID without a license.