SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The Internet portal Yahoo! is reportedly developing a plan to combat spam by authenticating the sender of every email transmitted on the Web.
NewScientist.com news service said the project would involve revamping the email system by building a worldwide database of digital domain name "keys" -- a string of characters associated with a domain.
Under the plan, email messages would be automatically signed by the email server from which they are sent. Then, using a cryptographic scheme known as public key cryptography, the receiving server could check an incoming message to verify it came from a valid system.
Yahoo! told New Scientist it believes the system would prevent spammers from using forged email addresses, which is a common trick used to defeat anti-spam filters.
Mark Sunner, chief technical officer of the British email filtering company MessageLabs, says Yahoo! would need to work with every email server in the world to prevent all forged messages from getting through.
However, Sunner told New Scientist: "It's a step in the right direction. But it isn't a 'magic bullet' that's going to stop all spam."
