CHICAGO — The guys who decide how the Internet should work (a few are women) want you to know they don't run the Internet. Nobody does.

Despite its tremendous influence on Web technology, the Internet Engineering Task Force goes to great lengths to be loosey-goosey, almost hippie-like. It is a purely voluntary group with no dues, no board of directors and no headquarters.

"Our mission is to make the Internet work better," said Russell Housley of Herndon, Va., one of some 1,200 engineers from the U.S. and 40 other countries who gathered in Chicago this week to swap ideas. Earlier this year, they met in Prague and later they will meet in Vancouver.

The engineers make suggestions in the form of technical language protocols with arcane acronyms like TCP and DKIM, and they've developed a system for reviewing, approving and publishing standards. But they have no power to enforce anything.

Ordinary people who use the Web would have no idea what these engineers talk about — or that they even exist.

But it's not difficult to spot the netheads as they gathered in meeting rooms at Chicago's Palmer House or sat in the hotel's coffee shops and eateries. Nearly every one is tapping away on a laptop computer as he talks, eats or listens to others.

One project the engineers have worked on is aimed at decreasing phoney e-mail messages asking you to provide your bank, PayPal or some legitimate-sounding outfit with personal financial information. This form of spam, known as phishing, seeks to trick unsuspecting people by appearing to come from their bank or other place where they do business.

A new IETF standard attaches a signature to real communications from an actual business, enabling computer servers to identify and discard the phonies.

"If a server gets 70 e-mails from PayPal and only five have the real signature, then only five go through and 65 don't," said Barry Leiba, who has worked with other engineers for about 30 months on the new standard.

Leiba is a senior technical staff member for Internet messaging with IBM Research.

"I'm not here representing IBM," he said. "Our companies all have a general interest in seeing the Internet work better."