Iconix Arms Consumers Against Phishers

Promotions and giveaways aren’t just the lures for legitimate online retailers. Phishers are using the same tactics to steal personal information, and causing a downturn in email marketing. An email authentication service says they can help with that problem.

by Kristina Knight

Phishing sites are now using Flash instead of HTML to get around browser phishing detector and the number of unique phishing URLs is soaring. Phishing URLs jumped to more than 37,000 in October 2006 according to AntiPhishing.org. That is a 757% increase over the number of sites in October 2005. These URLs usually change one letter or number to create a spoofed address that looks like a real address. For example, to spoof www.paypal.com, the phisher would register www.paypa1.com – replacing the “l” with the number “1”. This spoofing of brands is what the Iconix software recognizes.

The software requires emails to be authenticated by sender identification or domain keys. Once the email is verified, the service marks it with an icon so consumers can be sure the email is legitimate. If an email cannot be verified or is found to be a scam it is not delivered to the consumer.

According to Jeff Wilbur, vice president of marketing for Iconix.com, “Authenticating email is the best way to preventing phishing attacks because it allows the receiving end – Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail – to verify that the email came from an actual company.”