NEW YORK— Google, Facebook and other
big tech companies are jointly designing a system for combating email scams
known as phishing. Such
scams try to trick people into giving away passwords and other personal
information by sending emails that look as if they come from a legitimate bank, retailer or other
business. When Bank of America customers see emails that appear to come from
the bank, they might click on a link that takes them to a fake site mimicking the real Bank of
America’s. There, they might enter personal details, which scam artists can
capture and use for fraud.
To combat that, 15 major technology
and financial companies have formed an organization to design a system for authenticating emails from
legitimate senders and weeding out fakes. The new system is called DMARC —
short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. DMARC builds upon existing techniques used
to combat spam. Those
techniques are designed to verify that an email actually came from the sender
in question.
According to Google, about 15 percent
of non-spam messages in Gmail come from domains that are protected by DMARC.
This means Gmail users “don’t need to worry about spoofed messages from these senders,” Adam Dawes, a product
manager at Google, said in a blog post. Google uses it already, both in its
email sender and email provider capacities. The heft of the companies that have already signed on to the
project certainly helps, and its founders are hoping it will be more broadly
adopted to become an industry standard.
The group’s founders are email
providers Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., AOL Inc. and Google Inc.; financial
service providers Bank of America Corp., Fidelity Investments and eBay Inc.’s
PayPal; online service companies Facebook, LinkedIn Corp. and American
Greetings Corp. and security companies Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path
and the Trusted Domain Project.
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VOCABULARY
1. Combating
(v) - to try to
stop something bad from happening or getting worse - used especially in news
reports. EXAMPLE: I have to combat this constant desire to eat chocolate.
2. Scam (n) - a clever but
dishonest way to get money. EXAMPLE: He got involved in a credit card scam.
3. Phishing (v)
- an attempt
to trick someone who has an internet bank account into giving information that
would allow someone else to take money out of the account
4. Legitimate
(adj.) - allowed by law. EXAMPLE: Their business operations are perfectly
legitimate.
5. Mimicking
(v) - to copy
the way in which a particular person usually speaks and moves, usually in order
to make people laugh. EXAMPLE: She was mimicking the various people in our
office.
6. Fraud (n) - the crime of getting
money by deceiving people. EXAMPLE: credit card fraud
7. Authenticating
(v) - to prove
that something is real, true, or what people say it is
8. Spam (n) - email messages
that a computer user has not asked for and does not want to read, for example
from someone who is advertising something:
9. Spoofed (v) - to try to make
someone believe in something that is not true, as a joke
10. Heft (n) - significance or importance.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How often do you use
emails?
2. Discuss about phishing.
3. How should tech
companies handle personal information?
4. Give other example
of fraud or scam in your community.
5. What should be the
punishment for this internet scam?
