Ah, sweet irony. Microsoft’s sender ID idea was designed to keep spammers from forging their identity in the ‘from’ line of emails. Now they are stealing the published info of legitimate senders and are using it to… (can you guess?) …forge where the email is coming from.

Here’s a short article on it.

I’m glad someone else is saying it: Sender ID will not end the spam problem. It may very well help stop identity forgery (fake ‘From’ lines) and Phishing, but it won’t stop you from getting ‘legitimate’ advertising delivered to your inbox. Oh, and political messages (which are exempt from the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act).

Larry Seltzer of E-Week talks about Sender ID not being the solution here. He talks about Sender ID likely to not even come to pass, here. Both good reads.

Just because ads will now come from a legitimate source - will only mean that filters would become more effective. But you’d still need a filter. And here’s a thought: how about reducing that spam that gets sent to you in the first place with an automatic unsubscribe system? I can only think of one program that does that.