NCL Spreads Anti-Phishing Awareness

U.S.' oldest 'consumer advocacy group', "National Consumers League" (NCL) has joined with 'Goodmail Systems' to spread public knowledge about e-mail authentication and certification. 'Goodmail' has created 'Certified E-mail', a set of e-mail that protects consumers from e-mail fraud and phishing scams.

The NCL has added e-mail authentication info for consumers to its anti-phishing awareness site, PhishingInfo.org. NCL developed this dite two years back to raise public awareness about 'e-mail certification and authentication and to teach consumers how to detect phishing attempts.

The site explains the various methods of phishing scams such as an e-mail posing to be from a consumer's bank enticing verification of passwords or PIN numbers. It shows users how "from" addresses can be mismatched, e-mail content has misspellings, or banks requesting for the account information that is already there in their records.

This week, NCL has upgraded its site with explanations of measures by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to filter out phishing e-mails with the support of 'authentication and accreditation' services. For this, the NCL has taken help from the reputed accreditation provider 'Goodmail', which has reviewed the additional information.

According to Susan Grant, Director, NCL's 'National Fraud Information Center', there is no easy way to solve the problem of phishing but there are indeed methods that need encouragement to help the approaches deter it.

E-mail authentication technology ratifies the authenticity of the e-mail sender. Mailbox and Internet Service Providers that send e-mails to consumers can employ this technology to watch for phishing clues. Consequently, consumers can be alerted of suspicious messages and obvious phishing mails can be blocked from reaching consumer inboxes.
E-mail certification adds one more layer of protection by verifying the source of the message and confirming that the sender is a legitimate party with the permission of e-mailing to the particular recipient.

Executive Director of Goodmail said that they are happy to work with the 'National Consumers League' towards the goal of raising awareness of online scams like phishing. They would be also providing tools and technologies to consumers to protect against such attacks. Cyber security is a shared responsibility between businesses and consumers to make the Internet safe for one and all.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/26/2006