With phishing becoming an ever-growing threat, companies need to take effective steps to protect their customers to avoid being perceived as careless and thereby diminishing the value of their brand. To that end, Yahoo and eBay are joining forces to block phishing messages that specifically target PayPal users.
Starting today, eBay and its PayPal subsidiary will use Yahoo's DomainKeys e-mail authentication technology to verify the domain of an e-mail sender and the message integrity, allowing Yahoo to determine if messages should be delivered to a customer's inbox.
Throughout the years, eBay and PayPal have been constantly targeted by phishers seeking to trick consumers into divulging personal information such as credit card or password data in order to commit financial fraud, so it makes sense for them to become early adopters of the DomainKeys technology. And, if the technology proves successful, I wouldn't be surprised to see major banks jumping in soon.
Although the battle against phishing scammers certainly requires a multi-faceted approach, the collaborative effort between Yahoo, eBay and PayPal is a significant step forward and should help cut down on the unauthorized account activity and identity theft problem.