Anti-phishing alliance launched by industry giants

A team comprising the digital industry's biggest players - including Google, Facebook and Yahoo! - has been formed to fight back against phishing.

The act, which sees cyber-criminals fool email and internet users into revealing sensitive information, has united some of the industry's biggest names in the fight against it.

According to Wired.com, the alliance has taken one of its first steps towards stamping out the practice - launching DMARC, otherwise known as 'Domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance'. The alliance will work to develop existing and new technologies which can help stamp out phishing scams, hopefully providing some reassure to email marketing providers or those open to such threats.

For example, the big names will focus on protocols such as the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and the Sender Policy Framework (SPF).

A spokesperson for DMARC, Google's Adam Dawes, shared his thoughts on the criminal activity. He stated: "One of the worst experiences for a user is being phished. The best way to protect them is to make sure the email never reaches the span folder at all."

In order to work towards this goal, DMARC released a statement revealing: "It is the goal of DMARC.org to submit the draft specification to the IETF so that it may begin the process of becoming an official Internet Standard RFC - available to everyone for reference, implementation and improvement."

Thenextweb.com confirmed that alliance and DMARC in particular already has significant backing; hopefully indicating that it can make a real difference in the world of cyber crime.