So what's all this talk about "Sender ID" and what exactly does it mean to you as an email user? Sender ID is the convergence of Microsoft's "Caller ID" and Meng Wong's "Sender Policy Framework" (SPF).

What Sender ID does is verify that every piece of email sent actually did originate from the domain it claims to have come from, based on the sender's server IP.

The majority of junk email being sent uses forged sender addresses. This practice is also known as "Spoofing." Spoofing goes hand in hand with a scam called "Phishing." This is where someone sends spoofed email, usually pretending to be from your Bank, credit card companies or other highly trusted organizations, trying to get you to divulge your credit card numbers,usernames or passwords -- even your social security number. Once the phisher obtains this information, it is used to hack into your financial accounts or make unauthorized charges on your cards. For more on Phishing, see this site: http://www.antiphishing.org/ Sender ID will hopefully prevent these types of practices completely.

A draft proposal of Sender ID was sent for review to the "Internet Engineering Task Force" for consideration as an Industry Standard for email authentication.

The task force's decision remains to be seen. Microsoft recently threw a wrench in the mix by deciding to demand a registration license for their part of the Sender ID Program. Since the new protocols need to be freely available to the public, this is causing additional problems.

Here's a quick breakdown of the Sender ID process in a nutshell:

1) All email servers must publish the ID address of their outbound email servers in the DNS (Domain Name System)

2) When email is received, each system looks at the incoming messages to determine if they did indeed originate from the domains listed.

3) This verification is determined by querying the DNS for the list of outbound email server IP addresses for that particular domain. If the IP the email was sent from is not in that list, it is most likely a spoofed message.

Remember, sender ID offers no guarantee that your email will be delivered, nor does it solve the huge Spam problem, but it will stop Domain Identity Theft by spoofers.

For more information, even an online wizard to help you create your own SPF text record see http://microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/privacy/spam_senderid.mspx another great resource with some very handy tools is http://spf.pobox.com