Yahoo tackles notorious eBay-PayPal "phishing" scams

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo announced on Thursday it will start thwarting scammers that send bogus eBay or PayPal account e-mails to trick people into revealing passwords and credit card numbers.

Yahoo said it collaborated with eBay, which owns online financial transactions service PayPal, to devise a way to block the fake messages from the US Internet firm's free e-mail accounts.

The scam, referred to as "phishing" because it relies on hooking victims with deceptive e-mail messages, is perpetual online bane.

The messages typically purports to be from PayPal or eBay and claim the recipients' accounts with the services will be cancelled if they don't validate password, credit card or other sensitive information.

Yahoo, eBay and PayPal are installing DomainKeys Identified Mail technology that verifies messages actually come from eBay or PayPal before delivering them.

The technology identifies domains from which messages are sent, meaning it should help identify sources of scam emails, according to Yahoo.

The enhancement is to be phased-in globally during the coming weeks. "While there is clearly no silver bullet for solving the problems of phishing and identity theft, today's announcement is great news," said PayPal chief information security officer Michael Barrett.