AOL Checking for DKIM

AOL announced recently it is checking incoming e-mail for the DKIM authentication standard.

The authentication announcement makes AOL one of three major North American Internet service providers to implement DKIM. The other two are Yahoo! and Google.

“Like other authentication platforms, DKIM does not guarantee delivery,” said e-mail service provider e-Dialog in a communication explaining the changes to clients. “It simply authenticates that the e-mail is from the domain it claims as its origin.”

E-mail authentication aims to combat e-mail fraud and phishing by helping Internet service providers make sure e-mails are really from organizations from which themselves purport itself to have been sent.

In another change, AOL is reportedly going to start asking mailers for two pieces of information in order to get whitelisted, or put on a list of non-spamming mailers: the domain and IP information for each mail stream and the type of e-mail that will be coming from each.

“Delivery issues will only occur if the type of e-mail being sent differs greatly from what is expected in a given mailstream,” according to e-Dialog.