Sender Policy Framework

Coyote, who writes a great blog, asks Is there anyway to keep a third party from using your email address in this way?  The short answer is no, but it can give you a moral sense of doing the right thing by using Sender Policy Framework.  This poorly named technology allows people that own a domain to say what servers they are allowed to send email from.  Currently only a tiny fraction of the domains implement this, but if you get an email that fails SPF, you can definitely throw it away.

Does this help with you receiving spam?  No, not really since so few people implement this.  However, if 1% of the domains implemented this and 1% of your spam was forged from these emails, you could reduce your spam by 1%.  Does it stop people from forging your email?   No, they just laugh about it since so few people are using the technology.  Now, if you're getting a lot of forgeries from Ebay, Hotmail, etc., it could be useful, because these big names DO implmenent SPF.

I'm still hopeful that SPF will some day achieve critical mass and become useful.