J.D. Falk
Director, Internet Standards & Governance
Email Intelligence Group
J.D. Falk worked on email and anti-spam systems and policies for more than fifteen years, including at such influential companies as the original Mail Abuse Prevention System, Microsoft, and Yahoo!. While at Microsoft, J.D. devised network-level anti-spam technology which cut the level of inbound spam connections in half – at least for a little while. At Yahoo!, he worked closely with the creators of DomainKeys and DKIM, and managed the creation of their outbound and inbound compliant feedback loop systems. J.D. was also active in policy matters as a long-time board member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE http://www.cauce.org/), and was very active in the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG http://www.maawg.org/) since 2005; he served as MAAWG's Document Editor, and held Return Path's seat on the Board of Directors. More recently J.D. had moved from the sidelines to participate in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF http://www.ietf.org/), primarily in the DKIM and MARF working groups. Along with writing for Return Path, J.D.'s articles have been published by CircleID, CAUCE, and IEEE Internet Computing magazine. He is the initial instigator and the only non-anonymous contributor to the curated linkblog Box of Meat. J.D. died on November 16, 2011 at the age of 37. He is deeply missed by the many, many people around the world who were privileged to know him and work with him.