Email Authentication - Criticism

Criticism

This section requires expansion.

Some experts take the position that the ISP is the major drawback to proper elimination of spam. The premise is that the regulating agencies have no authority, and the ISPs have no incentive.

“Authentication cannot stop spam, unless the cop/Reputation Service/Certificate Authority in charge revokes certificates for spamming. If that could happen, then ISPs would also be willing and even enthusiastic about terminating accounts or otherwise controlling (e.g. port block) their spammers. If ISPs would do that, then there would be no spam to need authentication to stop spam and so need for a CA playing cop. As long as ISPs remain unwilling to police their own spamming customers, they would never deal with a CA willing to play cop.
Authentication involving TLS, SMTP-AUTH, or S/MIME cannot stop backscatter for the same reasons SPF, DKIM, and the rest were, are, and always will be powerless against it. Some of those reasons are why Yahoo still does not sign DKIM on all outgoing mail, Hotmail still publishes whishywashy SPF RRs and neither requires their snakeoil forgery solution on incoming mail.”
--Vernon Schryver (Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse operator)

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