Gmail now blocking fake eBay, PayPal e-mails

Google on Tuesday said it is now using an e-mail authentication technology to keep phishers from luring Gmail users to fake eBay and PayPal Web pages in order to steal usernames and passwords.

The technology, DomainKeys, uses cryptography to verify the domain of the sender of an e-mail. It allows e-mail providers to validate the domain from which an e-mail originates, and it enables easier detection of phishing attempts by helping identify abusive domains.

Last October, Yahoo announced that it was protecting Yahoo Mail users with eBay and PayPal accounts from phishing attempts using the same technology.

The DomainKeys technology is covered by a patent assigned to Yahoo. The company released it under a dual-license scheme that allows the companies to use it royalty-free under the GNU General Public License (GPL 2.0), which enabled the Internet Engineering Task Force to approve it as a proposed Internet standard.

[kyle5434]

Kudos to Yahoo for releasing it under the GPL .

[Zero187]

thank god

[humanssssss]

Phishers are doing a disservice to the commerce Internet. They need to be educated about voluntary exchange. It is not voluntary when people are going to a website expecting some other owner than the one stated in the email plus the malice intent of the site owner to trick users in believing the owner is the stated site. These websites should be taken down.

[JennyHow]

This is really a good move. Glad Gmail did it!

[garlota]

@humanssssss: Is that a serious comment? If it is, then it sounds very naive. First, phishers do not need to be educated. They know perfectly well what they are doing. They are attempting to steal money from people regardless of the consequences. They know perfectly well their activities ruin trust in online commerce, and that it is not at all "voluntary." No education. Also, there is not a single person on this planet that doesn't agree these websites should be taken down (except for the phishers themselves, and perhaps some malcontents that already distrust the internet and are happy to see its vulnerabilities exposed). The problem is that there is no single authority that has control over the internet that can do so. What authority there is on the internet is highly fragmented across thousands (if not millions) of private and public concerns all over the planet, falling under hundreds of different national (and thousands of local) jurisdictions. Usually, individual ISPs will take down such sites, but the phisphers just move on to another one or simply high-jack computers belonging to clueless users so they aren't answerable to any one at all.

[TogetherinParis]

Yahoo chokes with spam.

[nycborg]

Thank you Google!

[Urbane.Tiger]

I couldn't get a response from any instantiation of PayPal for 72 hrs last week - not from their web server, their payments gateway nor their mail server - wonder if it was Gargle testing DomainKeys, if so then it would seem to be the ultimate DoSser.

[imoracle]

Nice post, well I recieved an email yesterday itself asking me to update my card information as it has been deactivated and finally realized its a phishing site.

Read more and see the screen shots of the same here:

http://abhinavsingh.com/blog/2008/07/fake-email-from-paypal-cloned-sites/

[Seaspray0]

Darn! Before I can help that nice Nigerian Prince export his money, I'm going to have to update my paypal account with this email I just got. But now google won't let me!

[JanTallent]

I agree with the kudos for gmail doing this and wonder why other companies have not or do not. I have spent most of the past 9 years working to help newbies avoid the scams and schemes and tricks but sure cannot reach enough of them and I feel ALL email programs can do this!
Just MHO.

[laugh-er]

I await to see the day when all SMTP/POP servers adapt this kind of technology as the standard. Then I can reduce my multi-layered Spam filtering to just one and finally see the filters list shrink.

[ajaypathak]

that's a old news
read here the complete story
http://readerszone.com/google/new-security-features-introduced-in-gmail.html

[davi010]

Google has taken the initiative to do it!! I'm glad. Congratulations!
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Kate
Washington Treatment Centers