Free SPF filter

I just finished a lengthy article on Microsoft’s Sender ID specification; it should hit print in November. One of the points I had to address was the sad fact that Exchange itself currently doesn’t support either SPF or Sender ID. This makes it hard to aggressively advocate that people deploy a Microsoft standard that isn’t currently supported by their own products.

As it turns out, there is a solution for Exchange 2000 and Exchange Server 2003. Michael Brumm has a free SPF filter for Exchange; as a bonus, it also works with the IIS and Windows XP SMTP services. GFI has purchased this technology for possible future inclusion in MailEssentials, but they’re allowing the author to continue to distribute his filter until they ship their own version. Get it and check it out. SPF and Sender ID aren’t perfect technical solutions, but they can be useful if they’re widely enough deployed.