Introduction

My first four posts of this did not go through, so I'm reposting again.
As an addendum, I won't be able to take part in discussions until after
Wednesday, at which point I'll catch up.

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My name is David Green. In May 2002, while playing a rhythmic beat on my
delete key due to spam, it dawned on me that SMTP could in fact be
changed to authenticate senders. I put together my basic idea in an
email, and sent it to the namedroppers@ietf list:

"I'm sorry if this is off-topic, but I couldn't find a working group
that is working on dealing with spam, so this is the closest match I
could find. I know this is in no way related to IPv6 or anything else
you guys are working on, but it is an idea I had involving the addition
of a RR type. If this is not the right place to be sending this, any
pointers to other working groups/forums would be greatly appreciated.
And I appreciate all of the hard work you guys are doing... My idea is
attached (domauth.txt)"

...followed by an RMX-type proposal. The idea was to flesh out the
details if any interest was shown, which never happened. I think I went
about proposing the wrong way - I should have fleshed out all of the
details, and then expected people to show interest :) In any case, 16
months have passed, mine original proposal was never updated, and many
other RMX-type proposals have appeared.

I want to see an RMX-type system adopted for sender authentication. I
have no particular attachment to my approach, nor anyone else's. My only
motivation is to see the best approach adopted, whether that means one
of the existing systems that have been proposed, or perhaps a new one
that we will develop through this mailing list.

My background:

I have been designing and coding systems for EarthLink (previously
MindSpring) for 7 years, although I am not here on their behalf. I
currently use Java, Perl, and Progress 4GL on a daily basis. I have been
a serious hobbyist computer programmer since the early 1980s. My first
email account was on CompuServe around 1982. In the 1980's and early
1990's, I spent much of my time BBSing, Co-SysOping several boards in
the New Orleans area. I helped administer FIDOnet mail and many
WWIV-based mail systems on those boards as well as other mail networks.

I got my first Internet in 1993, and I started using Linux full-time in
1994 (starting with kernel v1.1.59), playing with Sendmail and QMail. In
1996 I got my first dedicated home access, and I have run my own mail
servers ever since, switching between Postfix, QMail and Sendmail at
various times. I host mail for about a dozen family members. I currently
run SpamAssassin server-side for those users.

I did not check mail for 48 hours last week, and I came back to 1500+
spam. SpamAssassin caught all but 300 of them.

Cheers,

David Green

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