Phishing: A Call to Authenticate!
I recently saw these stats on the impact of Phishing (spammers fraudulently coaxing consumers into providing credit and other information). The time for email authentication technologies, such as Sender ID, SPF and DKIM has clearly arrived and is necessary to keep the email from its steady erosion in the eyes of consumers.
"--Survey: Phishing Increase In 2005 Is Eroding Confidence of Online Customers
The Gartner survey of 5,000 online buyers found that more than 1 million consumers were scammed out of $925 million in 2004 because of phishing attacks. In 2005, 34 percent of the world’s phishing sites are based in the U.S. China is home to 15 percent, followed by Korea at 9 percent of all phishing sites. The Anti-Phishing Working Group’s statistics show that active phishing sites increased by nearly 17 percent between April and May 2005. The group found 3,326 U.S. phishing sites in May 2005, compared with 1,142 in October 2004."
Sure SPF and Sender ID have some shortcomings with email forwarding, etc. But my recommendation is that all firms authenticate their email in some way this year -- especially true for businesses in the financial industry. The benefits have already begun to payoff with major ISP's all planning to check for authenticated mail in the near term. Get on board.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
Thanks for reading.
Chip
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