Information, Computer and Network Security Terms Glossary and Dictionary

DomainKeys

DomainKeys is an anti-spam/phishing technology developed by Yahoo that uses a form of public key cryptography to authenticate the sender's domain. Today, the sender of an email can spoof the originating address so that recipients will think it came from someone else. The Domain Key technology enables the receiving end of e-mail to easily filter out emails in which the sender's stated address could not be authenticated as the actual address. Technically, mail servers generate a public/private key pair and sign outgoing messages with the private key, while publishing the public key as part of their DNS record. The signature can be used to confirm that the sender of the email has not been spoofed. The presence or lack of a signature can be used as part of the process of identifying spam.

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DomainKeys