Google, Microsoft, And Others Publish New Email Security Standard

[HardOCP News]

According to InfoWorld, a group of engineers have taken the wraps off the SMTP Strict Transport Security mechanism hoping that the new security standard can eliminate man-in-the-middle attacks on your e-mail.

Engineers from some of the world's largest email service providers have banded together to improve the security of email traffic traversing the Internet. Devised by engineers from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Comcast, LinkedIn and 1&1 Mail & Media Development & Technology, the SMTP Strict Transport Security is a new mechanism that allows email providers to define policies and rules for establishing encrypted email communications.

 

[BryanSTG]

LinkedIn...the same company caught and fined $13 million for spamming users? That really legitimizes things.

 

[MV75]

How about they do something about the million fake linkin, whatsapp, paypal, canadan pharmacy, etc, that I'm continuously reporting as spam, and the rest of the crap first?

 

[viscountalpha]

Smells like bullshit to me.

 

[raz-0]

Smells like bullshit to me.

It sounds useful if your goal is something like HIPAA compliance/security. It doesn't exactly sound all that useful to me in terms of spam or general email system attacks. However, Google and such handle a LOT of email accounts. Perhaps they see more persistent attempts to generally compromise their traffic.