Sendmail Inc. has officially released the first version of the Sender ID authentication specification for beta testing. Basically, it is like a “caller ID” for email. Believed to be a major victory in the war against spam, this authentication method could be a useful tool in the anti-spam arsenal.

Sendmail Inc., the global provider of electronic message management solutions, today released the first implementation of the Sender ID authentication specification for testing. The module is published on the Internet as an open source plug-in to the sendmail MTA, the dominant mail routing platform on the Internet. The announcement is part of Sendmail’s Messaging Integrity Pilot Program to accelerate the development and deployment of sender authentication.
The Sender ID protocol is a combination of Meng Wong’s Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Microsoft’s Caller ID for Email. It is being developed by MARID (MTA Authorization Records In DNS), an IETF working group, and is one of a range of schemes intended to combat email fraud, such as phishing and spoofing as well as spam.