E-mail and social media giants Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have teamed up in a new global alliance that aims to significantly reduce the threat of fraudulent electronic messages, such as 'phishing' and 'spam', which litter the internet.
The four companies joined 11 other firms in the technical working group named DMARC.org - short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance - that has developed and aims to promote widespread adoption of an official internet standard based on existing technologies to combat deceptive e-mail.
'E-mail phishing defrauds millions of people and companies every year, resulting in a loss of consumer confidence in e-mail and the internet as a whole,' said DMARC chairman Brett McDowell, the senior manager of customer security initiatives at online payments service PayPal.
'Industry co-operation - combined with technology and consumer education - is crucial to fight phishing,' McDowell said.
Security software provider Symantec called phishing an online con game and the so-called phishers nothing more than tech-savvy con artists and identity thieves.
A phishing message typically includes at least one link to a fake web site, designed to mimic that of a legitimate business and trick the recipient into divulging sensitive data, such as bank and credit card accounts.