Earlier today Yahoo, eBay and PayPal announced that they were partnering to protect users from phishing scams, with technology developed by Yahoo called DomainKeys.
PayPal, Yahoo, Expand Phishing Net
Sara Gorman, a spokesperson for PayPal commented on the partnership and told Murdok how the partnership came about. She said that customers have made it clear that they know that phishing is carried out by criminals outside of their systems and that they wanted help in fighting the scams.
Gorman said that it was a natural fit for PayPal, eBay and Yahoo to work together to fight phishing. She noted that the three companies have had a longstanding relationship for the past several years, and that they have been working on this specific project for about a year.
On the overall problem of phishing Gorman said,” At PayPal, we have always recognized that there is no silver bullet to prevent phishing, and industry partnerships are extremely important in the fight against e-mail fraud. PayPal and eBay are also working with all of the major ISPs and hope to roll out similar programs in the near future.”
As for how much fraud the partnership hopes to reduce Gorman said that it was too early to tell what impact the effort will have on phishing and fraud but that the collaboration was a good first step to help fight the problem.
“After all, if phishing emails never make it to users’ inboxes, it’s hard for them to fall for the scams,” Gorman said.
