“Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. and Internet portal Yahoo Inc. are combining their efforts to combat e-mail spam and forgery in a step that’s expected to help expand adoption of the technology.

The move, announced Wednesday, combines two techniques that rely on cryptography to help determine whether the sender of an e-mail message is legitimate. Sending messages using a false address is a common tactic of spammers.

“This is the first time that we’ve had something fundamental to the mail system that the vendors could get together and agree on,” said Sendmail Chief Technology Officer Eric Allman, an e-mail pioneer who helped merge the technologies. “That’s an amazing thing right there.”

The combined technology, DomainKeys Identified Mail, borrows elements from Yahoo’s Domainkeys and Cisco’s Internet Identified Mail system.”

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