Phishing

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Put an end to spam and phishing by reforming email Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

REPPED: It is way past time for the internet community to do something serious about spam and phishing attacks. The problem has gone way beyond spam now. Spam itself was quite annoying. We've all waded through hundreds, if not thousands, of emails in our inboxes, trying to find the legitimate emails that we wanted. Even all the anti-spam software, spam filters and schemes for authenticating inbound email and making senders click links to verify real people didn't really stop spam, because the spammers got creative.

These scammers are very good and creating these official-looking "phishing" websites. In fact, they're making a living doing it, and I'm sure they're making a very good living, because many people log in. They'll give their usernames, passwords and social security numbers right to the con artists. Then, it's over. The con artists have got you. They've got everything they need to make your life miserable from that day forward in terms of your finances and your credit rating. Once your identity is stolen, it is very difficult to get your finances back in order.

Now we've got phishing, and the financial institutions are getting worried because customers of the big banks in the United States and around the world are falling prey to this scam. This is where it's really starting to get serious. Now we have the attention of powerful corporations, because it's hitting them where it counts. These crimes are being committed against their financial institutions. I think that "phishers" or scammers have awakened a sleeping giant in using this tactic. They have enraged the financial world. The financial world has money, and it is influential.

What's at stake here is not just the personal victims of phishing attacks. What's at stake is the credibility of these financial institutions and the credibility of email as a medium of communication. If we can't get these problems solved, people may increasingly distrust email, period. This threatens the very foundation of trust between customers and their financial institutions. What would happen if we all had to go back to banking by paper and postal services? Can you imagine actually writing out a physical check, licking a stamp and mailing it to your bank?

We need to find a way to crack down on phishing and stop the spammers cold. Solutions for safeguarding online safety Many of you out there are nodding your head and saying, "Yes, we know all this. What about some solutions?" Remember, I've been in this industry for more than 12 years. I am the president of a software company that's focused on permission email marketing software. I've seen the problems and trends in this industry. My personal belief is that we're going to require a global system of sender authentication.

Who would have thought of phishing five years ago? What's going to happen two or three years from now? It will probably be something new and even more horrifying in terms of identity theft, credit theft or financial scams. Who knows what these people can come up with? Or, we can go down another path. We need to reshape the email medium. We need to have a trusted system so that we can authenticate the identity of senders. It's a difficult thing to do, but we can go down that path.

Interview with Loren McDonald, vice president of marketing at EmailLabs Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

This doesn't resolve the problem of phishing. They can buy a misspelling of Citicorp's name or something and register it. It doesn't solve that problem, but it's a first step in stopping some of those problems. The ISPs aren't going to let those emails through if senders basically try to hide who they are. After that is reputation, and there are a number of companies out there that basically are going to build knowledge bases and databases of information around the practices of the senders.

Interview with Jeanne Jennings, Online Marketing Consultant Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

It's something we are all aware of, and everyone is really concerned about, because a lot of the new programs, in an effort to stop spam and phishing, are making any links not live. if you get an HTML email this kills you, because you can't click on it, and if there is no URL visible you can't type it in, and then the images don't show up. So it's something we're really concerned about.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.