Banks, Internet companies team up to fight spam

[DainBramaged]

Source: Reuters on-line

Some of the world's biggest Internet companies and financial services firms have developed a new approach to fighting email spam that they hope will reduce online scams.

Facebook, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp have joined with financial firms Bank of America Corp, Fidelity Investments and eBay Inc's PayPal to create a set of industry standards for preventing criminals from sending out spam emails that appear to come from corporate email addresses.

Fraudsters often pose as banks and other trusted firms in attempts to persuade email recipients to provide payment card numbers, bank account information and other personal data or click on links that infect computers with malicious software.

The new approach calls for email providers and businesses to attack spammers by coordinating on a massive scale the use of two existing technologies for email authentication known by the acronyms SPF and DKIM, which have yet to be widely adopted.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/us-banks-internet-companies-team-up-to-f-idUSTRE80T14Z20120130

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Yeah, right, 10 years after the fact they decide to do something......