DoubleClick Announces Full Compliance With Microsoft's Sender ID Framework

Hoping to assure customers and consumers alike that missives sent via its e-mail management system are not susceptible to the domain spoofing and phishing efforts of spammers, DoubleClick pronounced on Thursday that it is fully compliant with Microsoft's sender ID framework. The company is the first e-mail service provider to herald its compliance.

Sender ID isn't exactly an intricate concept. By allowing e-mail recipients to verify the origins of a given missive based on the sender's IP address, the technology should make legitimate marketing e-mails more easily identifiable. In theory, then, companies relying on e-mail marketing for sales or brand-building won't have to worry as much about fraudulent e-mails chipping away at consumer trust--of both the company and the medium.

Speaking from Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters, where he and other e-marketing bigwigs were attending the Email Service Provider Coalition's Sender ID Summit, DoubleClick Senior Director of Email Operations and ISP Relations Ken Takahashi again stressed that sender ID authentication is merely a small skirmish in the continued war against irresponsible e-mail marketing. Like many of his tech-biz peers, he believes that some combination of government regulation, industry self-regulation, consumer education, and technology will ultimately eliminate the scourge of spam.

"It's one pillar in our overall concept," Takahashi said. "I view the sender ID framework as a building block that other technologies can and will build on."

eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman agreed, but only to an extent. "This is definitely one of the first steps that can really make a difference," he noted. At the same time, he questioned Takahashi's comments about the multi-pronged solution that could lead to the end of spam. "Legislation? That's not working because there's no force behind it. Self-regulation? Legitimate marketers have been doing that all along. Consumer education? That's sort of passing the buck. A technology solution--especially one in this area where you have Microsoft, AOL, EarthLink, and Yahoo! working together--that's where we want to go."

Tweaking DoubleClick by calling its sender ID press release "a little bit self-serving," Hallerman questioned whether the new technology will work exactly as its boosters envision. "Like with any other solution in this area, there could be a problem with false positives. That doesn't make what DoubleClick is doing any less important."

As for the war against spam, Takahashi believes that it has entered its second phase. In the first one, marketers, ISPs, and just about everybody else went through an endless cycle of blocking, filtering, and blacklisting. Now, the industry seems to have shifted its focus toward e-mail authentication: Is the sender really who he or she purports to be? The likely next step is a ratings system of some sort, where senders are evaluated and either waved through or banned based on their prior performance. "We might be able to manage this like a credit bureau," Takahashi said.

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