Talk:Email authentication

The challenge in this article is to introduce a subtopic that has a huge amount of detail without overwhelming the non-expert reader. We can do that by keeping the focus narrow, relying on a parent topic to establish a conceptual framework and terminology for the discussion, and subtopics to offload much of the detail. In this article we will include just those details that are needed for a coherent presentation of the topic, or that are interesting enough to outweigh the burden of including them.

There are several authoritative references (RFCs) on authentication methods. There are also Wikipedia articles that may be more readable than the RFCs. In this article, we will try to avoid the "written by committee" style, where every contributor gets to squeeze in a few facts that he considers important. The subtopics on each authentication method will be a better place for more detail.

Terminology is a challenge. Should we use the same terms the experts use (MTA, Reverse Path, etc.) or terms that are more meaningful to non-experts (Mail Relay, Return Address, etc.)? We have chosen the latter, because our articles are intended for non-experts. Experts will have no trouble understanding what we mean, as long as we avoid mis-using any of their special terminology. We will capitalize terms that we intend to have a special meaning (e.g. Relay instead of relay).

Planned Additional Subtopics

  SPF
  SenderID
  DKIM
  CSV