Google Tackles Spam with E-mail Authentication

By

According to the Message Anti-Abuse Working Group, spam accounted for nearly 92 percent of e-mail messages sent in the first half of 2010. And Gartner reports that the number of victims who lost money due to phishing scams in 2008 was over five million U.S. consumers. The average loss was approximately $351 per consumer affected. And security company M86 reveals that nearly two percent of all mail is phishing related. That’s a heck of a lot of relatives of high-profile politicians asking you to help them transfer money in exchange for a cut of the profits.

However, Google hopes to put a stop to scamming by allowing Google Apps customers to sign their outgoing e-mail using a technology called DomainKeys Indentified Mail (DKIM). Essentially, DKIM is open-standard, e-mail authentication technology that demonstrates to users when incoming mail really is from a veritable source such as PayPal.

Reads a Google blog posting: “Today, we mark another notch in the spam-fighting belt: we’re making it possible for all Google Apps customers to sign their outgoing messages with DKIM, so their sent mail is less likely to get caught up in recipients’ spam filters. Google Apps is the first major e-mail platform – including on-premises providers – to offer simple DKIM signing at no extra cost. Once again, the power of the cloud has made it possible for us to bring this feature to millions of customers quickly and affordably.

‘We help the most-phished brands on the Internet manage their mail authentication programs, and the Google Apps solution is the simplest that we've encountered. Configuring DKIM for in-house systems requires plug-ins or additional gateway servers, making a company's mail environment more complex and difficult to manage. As a Google Apps customer, this feature took us only a few clicks in the control panel and an update of our DNS,’ said Kelly Wanser, CEO of eCert, an industry leader in providing critical protection against e-mail fraud."




Edited by Tammy Wolf
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

TechZone360 Contributing Editor

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

Can Science Outsmart Deepfake Deceivers? Klick Labs Proposes an Emerging Solution

By: Alex Passett    3/25/2024

Researchers at Klick Labs were able to identify audio deepfakes from authentic audio recordings via new vocal biomarker technology (alongside AI model…

Read More

Top 5 Best Ways to Integrate Technology for Successful Project-Based Learning

By: Contributing Writer    3/19/2024

Project-based learning, also popularly known as the PBL curriculum, emphasizes using and integrating technology with classroom teaching. This approach…

Read More

How to Protect Your Website From LDAP Injection Attacks

By: Contributing Writer    3/12/2024

Prevent LDAP injection attacks with regular testing, limiting access privileges, sanitizing user input, and applying the proper encoding functions.

Read More

Azure Cost Optimization: 5 Things You Can Do to Save on Azure

By: Contributing Writer    3/7/2024

Azure cost optimization is the process of managing and reducing the overall cost of using Azure. It involves understanding the resources you're using,…

Read More

Massive Meta Apps and Services Outage Impacts Users Worldwide

By: Alex Passett    3/5/2024

Meta's suite of apps and services are experiencing major global outages on Super Tuesday 2024.

Read More