More authentication means less spammers

One of the greatest injuries to the spam industry would be if every company in the world started using email authentication. The more companies that have their email authenticated the easier it will be for ISPs to identify legitimate emails and less spammers will be able to clog our inboxes with illegal phishing and spoofing messages.

Authenticating email allows ISPs to verify the IP address that sent an email, through using Sender ID/Sender Policy Framework records and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). Authentication is essential to securing brand and online reputations. It’s a win-win-win for ISPs, senders and consumers. Primary players like Google, AOL and Yahoo! already use DKIM as an email verification measure, AOL also uses SPF and Hotmail uses Sender ID.

But lots of companies still aren’t signing up to email authentication. In the US big retailers are getting it - email authentication has been adopted by three quarters of the Internet Retailer 100. But figures from Return Path’s Reputation Network, taken from over 65 million mailboxes, show less than a quarter of messages appear to be authenticated with DKIM.

It’s getting even easier for companies to authenticate their emails with Return Path’s new Domain Assurance service; a beta version is launching with the participation of Yahoo!, Comcast, Cloudmark and Tucows. This enables ISPs to ensure more subscribers receive the emails they have requested, reducing the number of legitimate emails that aren’t spam as well as reducing spam levels.

Return Path audits companies’ email infrastructure and email authentication to make sure they are properly configured. Company domains then go on a registry that states they are legitimate. This enables ISPs to further protect their customers from phishing emails pretending to be on their register, who also receive immediate notification of their brands being abused in spoofing and phishing attacks to their brands.

It sounds simple enough, and it is. Companies should authenticate more of their email. Spam levels will be reduced and more legitimate emails will reach consumers’ inboxes.