Another Win in the War on Spam
We all hate Spam. Not the processed meat in a can, the email messages that we did not want to receive. Whether they appear as advertisements for products we do not want or emails for services we have no interest in, everyone has received spam at some point. Sometimes, though, spam emails can be far more dangerous than annoying ads – they can contain phishing links that appear to come from a legitimate source.
These emails look like legitimate emails from banks, social networking sites, and other websites people use all the time. By clicking on the links in the email, or responding to it, people are tricked into providing their private information to whoever sent the email. Many people do not even realize the email is an Internet security threat at all because it appears to come from a trusted source.
Many of the companies that phishing emails duplicate have decided that enough is enough and they need to fight back. To that end, Microsoft, Google, Bank of America, Facebook, PayPal and others have banded together to create a standard for email service providers that will detect these illegitimate phishing emails and mark them as spam or automatically delete them.
Google says that Gmail already does this automatically, but other email services do not. When this new coalition is finished designing their new system, called DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance), it will provide a baseline for other companies to follow suit or join and use DMARC. For those who send out the real emails, this means phishing emails will copy them less and allow their users to trust the company more. For email providers DMARC will mean their users will receive less fraudulent emails and the company itself will have higher security.
By creating an industry standard for authenticating emails from legitimate sources, this coalition of companies believes they can almost entirely eliminate spam emails that contain phishing links. This solution, however, may only be temporary as cybercriminals are very persistent and have found a way around all security measures built in the past. Therefore, although DMARC will be a good resource and help for a while, it is only a matter of time before someone finds a way around the new system.
That means, although you may receive less spam emails, you still need to be vigilant about your Internet security. Always make sure the emails you receive are from legitimate sources and that the links they provide take you to the correct website. Do not provide your credit card, bank account, or social security information unless you are completely certain you are in a secure and legitimate website. Despite DMARC’s potential usefulness, there is no substitute for human caution.
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Filed under: david milman, Google, Internet, Internet Security, phishing, rescuecom, scams, security