DMARC Technology Firms Challenge Email Spam

15 of the world's best-known technology firms are working together to try and take on the global issue of email spam.

Under the guise of the joint DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) initiative, those involved include Google, Facebook, PayPal and Microsoft and they're developing an industry blueprint that it's hoped will bring an end to phishing attacks and deter cyber criminals from misrepresenting firms in emailed spam.

Criminals of this type typically adopt the profile of a high-profile company in order to elicit potentially exploitable data from online users - bank account details, credit card numbers and other information, for example.

DMARC Email Spam Challenge

Working in collaboration, DMARC's 15 technology groups are aiming to make attacks of this kind much trickier to carry out. Their combined email spam challenge includes establishing an email authentication scheme tailored to 21st century online needs while they'll also create a so-called ‘feedback loop', between bona fide email senders and the online users that receive them.

"Email phishing defrauds millions of people and companies every year, resulting in a loss of consumer confidence in email and the internet as a whole", PayPal's Brett McDowell, who chairs DMARC, explained in a statement. He added: "Industry cooperation - combined with technology and consumer education - is crucial to fight phishing."

DMARC Technology Firms

The full list of DMARC technology firms is Facebook, PayPal, Bank of America, Fidelity, American Greetings, LinkedIn, Trusted Domain Project, Return Path, eCert, Cloudmark, Agari, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and Gmail and never before has industry collaborated in this way.

In a statement released at the end of January 2011, DMARC further defined its mission statement. At present, it said, email providers have to depend on ‘complex and imperfect measurements to separate legitimate unauthenticated messages sent by the domain owner from fraudulent phishing messages sent by a scammer.'

It added: ‘By introducing a standards-based framework, DMARC has defined a more comprehensive and integrated way for email senders to introduce email authentication technologies into their infrastructure'.

Security Technology will present further coverage of DMARC's activities in future News coverage.

See also:

Companies supplying Email Security