In the Beginning, there was SMTP. Quickly followed by spam. Lots of it. Then came DMP… RMX… FSV… S/MIME. Microsoft pushed Caller-ID. AOL endorsed Meng Wong’s SPF. Yahoo wanted DomainKeys.

The Internet Engineering Task Force created the MTA Authorization Records in DNS Working Group (MARID) to bring them all together. To build one standard for checking out email message senders through DNS. You might say,”One standard to rule them all.”

The idea was that everybody would give a little. For awhile, it looked like it might work. Then came the details. Like semantics, along with the tradeoffs between user convenience, bandwidth, upgradeability, accuracy and complexity.

As the solution deadline nears, one exasperated contributor notes: “It has taken two months to discuss identities, something that was pretty well discussed… elsewhere over the last year. We can not realistically create a new algorithm in the next month and test that algorithm enough to be trustworthy.”

Another suggests time travel. Dryly.

Yahoo has apparently had enough. Sweeping the chatter aside, it’s annointed DomainKeys the Standard, by releasing it for public use along with AOL’s SPF. Ya gotta give ‘em credit. Giant cojones… even if the technique’s lacking. Watch for Microsoft to drop its licensing nonsense and follow suit.

In other words, there may be no “standard”… that matters.

We’ll say it again. The current Best Practice for overworked admins is WaS (Wait and See).