AOL Finds Spam Strategy, Loses DomainKeys

Since Yahoo first proposed its DomainKeys authentication standard for email (DKIM), AOL has played coy.

That strategy has apparently served the uber-ISP well, as it has been extended indefinitely.

In a standing-room-only webinar courting direct marketers, AOL speaker Nicholas Graham was asked when the firm will get around to adopting DKIM’s cryptographic-based technology. Christine Blank of DMNews reports Graham responded, “We will have to wait and see. The facts are still out.”

The facts for which AOL is oh-so-patiently waiting appear to be increasingly unlikely… Industry adoption.

While many experts enthuse over the advantages of authentication, those charged with setting up their systems for compliance seem to be emphatically… disinterested.

A couple of surveys by research engineer, Andrew Newton, seem to bear out that contention. After randomly sampling 13 million domains in December and January, the Verisign guru found that operational DKIM servers had doubled… to less than one quarter of one percent.

At the same time, Newton pointed out, the growth rate of a more popular and easier to adopt method, Sender Policy Framework (SPF), plummeted. Despite years of trying, and a huge shot in the arm from Microsoft, adoption hovers around a dismal 3%.

Enter GoodMail. Its CertifiedEmail (or, as we see it, Ticket Booth for Bypassing Spam Filters) program converts direct mailers from a non-stop source of spam filtering irritation to a profit center. Now, instead of bitching at them, AOL’s pitching at them… in webinars… like the one presented to direct marketers by AOL and its new pal, Pivotal Veracity, a creator of tools for optimizing delivery of stop-calling-it-you-know-what. AOL even briefly flirted with dumping SPF, till the blogosphere exploded.

Ignoring the obvious, Yahoo doggedly continues to herald AOL as one of the “industry leaders who played a valuable role in furthering the development of the DKIM specification.”

Unfortunately for Yahoo, there’s more money in selling spam than blocking it.

Email Battles Backgrounder:

• AOL, Yahoo Follow Bill Gates: We Don’t See No Stinkin’ Spam.; Email Battles; 9 February 2006.
• DomainKeys Up, SenderID Down, Who Cares?; Email Battles; 12 July 2005.
• Father of SPF Meng Wong Bounced From SPF Council; Email Battles; 23 January 2006.
• Internet Draft: Domain-based Email Authentication Using Public-Keys Advertised in the DNS (DomainKeys); Mark Delaney; The Internet Society; 29 September 2005.
• MARID Fiddles While Yahoo Burns ‘Em?; Email Battles; 19 May 2004.
• Meng Wong Plots Messaging’s Future; Email Battles; 5 October 2005.
• Sender-ID Sent To The Bench; Email Battles; 16 September 2004.
• Why Service Providers Reject Sender-ID; Email Battles; 8 August 2005.