AOL to block scammers' sites

Company strikes a deal with security specialist Cyota to help it identify sites that falsely appear to represent legitimate businesses.

The story "AOL to block scammers' sites" published April 20, 2005 at 5:08 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[bobby_brady]

For $24.95/month it's at least AOL could do

Although I still think AOL is a rip off.

[sanenazok]

You

and everyone else who has a brain.

[hadaso]

And perhaps conveniently block competitors sites?

I am not saying that AOL is going to use this to block competitors or anyone. But if this (ISPs blocking customers from "suspected sites") becomes commonplace you can expect that there will be those that do block competitors, or provide the service for third parties, and whenever caught just claim that it was mistaken for a fraud site, and "it's better to err than play unsafe..."

For a consumer it is very easy to avoid phishing scam: just don't give your bank the same email address you use with anyone else. That way only your bank will know the address it sends to, and if you receive a message claiming it's your bank on another email address, you know it's not your bank (the same with anyone else you do business with.) Email addresses are cheap. They are not scarce resources like phone numbers. You can have as many as you like, and use a different hard to guess address with anyone that you don't want scammers to impersonate.

One recommendation: sneakemail.com (I use this service for all financial institutions I do business with). It creates addresses that are unguessable and forwards the email they get to your mailbox (ISP mailbox, other mailbox, wherever you like). I like it because it organizes the information so I can always know who got what email address without having to be organized myself. There aer several other such services (sneakemail was the first one). I don't use it for "throwaway addresses". Spamgourmet.com is better at that.

Other choices: register your own domain, then you can use all the addresses in the domain and forward them to wherever you like.

You can also use an email service that lets you use all the addresses in a subdomain of their domain. Fastmail.fm is one such service. You get unlimited addresses of the form [e-mail], and for one time fee you can also get [e-mail] (or a number of otther domains). I host my own domain with them, so I get to use all the addresses in ny doamin plus unlimited number of addresses under their domains.

[sanenazok]

Of course not

See, I can write a short reply.