Major email providers and financial institutions launch anti-phishing initiative

A group of leading email providers and social networks, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, have joined major financial institutions in forming a new organisation to fight against phishing attacks.

InformationWeek reports that the new organisation, known as DMARC.org, will specify a standard framework for email senders to authenticate their messages.

A phishing attack is when a hacker impersonates a trustworthy institution (for example, a bank or a credit card company) through a website or email message in order to get victims to hand over personal information, such as passwords or credit card details.

It is hoped the new framework will make phishing attacks more difficult by allowing end users to more easily verify the sender of an email message.