Microsoft is in talks to merge its e-mail authentication scheme, Caller ID for E-Mail, with another plan, SPF, which stands for sender policy framework, ClickZ News has learned. Both standards are aimed at adding the identity element to e-mail, which is seen as a critical first step to fighting spoofing, phishing, and spam.

''We would like to see these things converge,'' Ryan Hamlin, general manager of Microsoft's Anti-Spam Technology and Strategy Group, told ClickZ News. ''We've been here [standing in one place] for too long. We're anxious to get moving.''

Discussions between Microsoft and the folks behind SPF have heated up this week at meetings of the Internet Engineering Task Force's MARID group, and of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG). What's emerged is something that's being called ''the New SPF,'' which merges aspects of both proposals and -- critically for marketers -- addresses the issue of forged ''from'' e-mail domains.

''It is still in flux so don't take it as a fully-baked proposal; but it does lay out some new directions that people in the MARID interim meeting seem reasonably happy with in principle,'' wrote Meng Weng Wong, the most well-known force behind SPF, in a discussion list dedicated to the standard. ''More than anything I think they're relieved that we finally have some kind of convergence so the uncertainty goes away.''

The most revolutionary concept to emerge from the proposed convergence is the idea of a new field that would be added to the e-mail ''envelope'' called ''RFROM.'' (The ''R'' stands for responsible.) This field would contain the e-mail address responsible for sending of the message, and it could be checked by a receiving mail system before the e-mail is accepted.

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