Sender Authentication

In my next few posts, I plan to write a series on Sender Authentication, specifically on SPF and a little bit on SenderID and possibly even DomainKeys.

To my more technically oriented readers, I apologize if this is familiar territory for you as I hate to bore you.  However, I do have other readers that are not quite as familiar with these methods and would like to get a basic understanding of them.  In addition, because of the shift in the industry to tend towards sender-authentication, I think it makes sense to write about it.  After all, nothing grounds your knowledge in a subject better than teaching it.

My plan is to go over the basics of email headers, email envelopes and SPF records.  Then, I will go over how SFP and SenderID attempt to identify illegitimate senders using these records and how spam filters can use them to their advantage.

There are quite a number of resources on the web that already deal with the subject. I have read a lot of them in order to get my own understanding up to speed.  I plan to do my best to provide a nice overview of the entire subject.