The world's No. 1 Web mail service, Yahoo! Mail, is leading the anti-phishing fight by using fraud protection powered by PhishTank.com. This new solution is a component of its program to protect email users from malicious scam artists. PhishTank.com is a community Web site operated by OpenDNS where anyone can submit, track and share phishing information.

    The fraudulent attempt, named phishing, is usually made through e-mail, to steal your personal information. Phishing e-mails appear to come from a well-known organization and ask for personally identifying information -- such as credit card number, social security number, account number or password. PhishTank.com uses the wisdom of the crowds to gather information about phishing Web sites and makes all data it accumulates openly and freely available to any person or organization that wishes to use it to help fight phishing.

    in March 2007, according to PhishTank.com, alone there were more than 11,000 unique suspected phishing scams, each one representing potentially devastating financial losses for all recipients. Phishing has fast become a multi-million dollar industry for cyber thieves and Yahoo! Mail's decision to use PhishTank.com is part of its ongoing commitment to fight this Internet crime and keep its customers safe with the best technologies.

    Miles Libbey, Yahoo! anti-spam product manager, said: "By combining the data received from PhishTank.com with other anti-phishing resources, we are currently protecting Yahoo! Mail users from nearly 14 million phishing email messages per day. Listening to the community, developing enhanced technologies and collaborating with security leaders continue to be priorities as we work to protect email users from the industry-wide problem of phishing."

    In addition David Ulevitch, CEO of OpenDNS, said: "OpenDNS is thrilled Yahoo! Mail has chosen phishing protection powered by PhishTank. PhishTank is firmly rooted in the belief that the fight against phishing is a collaborative effort and we encourage other organizations to follow Yahoo! Mail's lead."

    PhishTank was launched in October 2006 to coincide with National Cyber Security Awareness Month. The system employs a advanced voting system that requires the community to vote "phish" or "not phish," reducing the possibility of false positives and improving the overall breadth and coverage of the phishing data. PhishTank makes all phishing data it accumulates public and available via programmable APIs, which allow other software developers to incorporate the anti-phishing data into their tools. The open access is intended to encourage the sharing of information and increase the chance of eliminating phishing all together. For more information about PhishTank, please visit: www.phishtank.com