ghacks Technology News

Gmail And Yahoo Mail Users Now Protected Against eBay And PayPal Phishing Mails

The award for the longest title ever could go to this one. But it’s good news actually. Both Email services are “supporting email authentication standards including DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to verify senders and help identify forged messages” for a few years now but could not eliminate all phishing emails because of companies signing their mails only partly. The filter was therefor not perfect which still meant that users were seeing phishing emails in their inboxes and spam folders.

PayPal and eBay finally made the decision to sign all emails originating from their servers including the international versions which means that it is possible to eliminate PayPal and eBay phishing emails before they even reach the inbox or spam folder. The system was tested for a few weeks silently and only a few users did notice according to the official Gmail blog.


Now any email that claims to come from “paypal.com” or “ebay.com” (and their international versions) is authenticated by Gmail and — here comes the important part — rejected if it fails to verify as actually coming from PayPal or eBay. That’s right: you won’t even see the phishing message in your spam folder. Gmail just won’t accept it at all. Conversely, if you get an message in Gmail where the “From” says “@paypal.com” or “@ebay.com,” then you’ll know it actually came from PayPal or eBay. It’s email the way it should be.

Sounds like a dream come true and could pose an end to phishing if more companies, and mail providers, would jump on the bandwagon of signed emails. Companies that come to my mind first are financial companies and other online stores. I still would not blindly trust any email from PayPal or eBay that would arrive in my inbox but it definitely is a step in the right direction. The best way to handle it is to visit the websites manually and perform the eBay or PayPal login there.

Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.

Related Articles:

Gmail Increases Email Security With Phishing Protection
How to defeat Phishing
PayPal Your Account Has Been Temporarily Limited Phishing Emails
New Phishing Mail Tactics
Ingenious PayPal mimicing spam



About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.

Author: , Saturday July 12, 2008 -
Tags:, , , , , ,


Responses so far:

  1. Jonathan says:

    That is good news! I have been the recipient of both eBay And PayPal phising messages, in my gmail account!

  2. Imrankhan says:

    Naya frend banaiye
    hi me apka frend hu

Leave a Reply   Follow Ghacks   Subscribe To Comment Rss

Subscribe without commenting

© 2005-2012 Ghacks.net. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - About Us