DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) lets an organization take
responsibility for a message that is in transit. The
organization is a handler of the message, either as
its originator or as an intermediary. Their reputation
is the basis for evaluating whether to trust the message
for further handling, such as delivery. Technically
DKIM provides a method for validating a domain name
identity that is associated with a message through cryptographic
authentication. The identity is independent of other email identities, such as the author's From: field.
Links:
DKIM attaches a new domain name identifier to a message and
uses cryptographic techniques to validate authorization
for its presence. The identifier is independent of any
other identifier in the message, such in the author's
From: field.
The first version of DKIM synthesized and enhanced Yahoo!'s DomanKeys and Cisco's Identified Internet Mail specifications. It was the result of a year-long collaboration among numerous industry players, during 2005, to develop an open-standard e-mail authentication specification. Participants included Alt-N Technologies, AOL, Brandenburg InternetWorking, Cisco, EarthLink, IBM, Microsoft, PGP Corporation, Sendmail, StrongMail Systems, Tumbleweed, VeriSign and Yahoo!. The team produced the initial specification and several implementations. It then submitted the work to the IETF for further enhancement and formal standardization.
The result is a set of IETF specifications and supporting documentation.
A number of organizations have offered Press
Contacts for matters relating to DKIM.
The current specifications are recommended for immediate use:
See this list of Organizations Providing Software, Hardware or Services with DKIM.
See this list of Consulting Services for assisting with DKIM development or deployment and use
An operations-related mailing list is available: dkim-ops.
For general discussion with other DKIM developers, join the dkim-dev mailing list.
For quick questions to developers primarily active with OpenDKIM, there is an #dkim IRC channel at efnet.org.
Yahoo's DomainKeys resulted in an Intellectual Property Rights claim concerning that applies to the DKIM specification.