When the telephone rings, most people check the caller ID window before answering. If they see the name or phone number of a family member, friend, or business associate, the conversation begins without fear or inconvenience.
The telephone equipment cannot be tricked. Even when the caller ID window displays "out of area" or "name blocked" messages, telephone users do not have to worry about risking their identity or placing personal information at risk if they decline to answer.
But this is not the case with e-mail. Malefactors can easily spoof the sender's address to trick the recipient into opening the message. Tricksters often make the subject line so inviting that the user cannot wait to click on a message that, once opened, might contain harmful computer code that installs ID-sniffing components or makes the computer susceptible to more unwanted e-mails, otherwise known as spam.
A solution to this problem might soon be available. The computer industry is fast-tracking a system called e-mail authentication, which will attempt to do for e-mail what caller ID does for telephone calls. E-mail authentication will assure the recipient that the sender actually is the person identified in the message header.
"I have no lack of confidence that, given time, it will be fully implemented, possibly within the next 18 months," said Tom Peterson, vice president of technology for IronPort Systems, an e-mail security firm.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/38096
The telephone equipment cannot be tricked. Even when the caller ID window displays "out of area" or "name blocked" messages, telephone users do not have to worry about risking their identity or placing personal information at risk if they decline to answer.
But this is not the case with e-mail. Malefactors can easily spoof the sender's address to trick the recipient into opening the message. Tricksters often make the subject line so inviting that the user cannot wait to click on a message that, once opened, might contain harmful computer code that installs ID-sniffing components or makes the computer susceptible to more unwanted e-mails, otherwise known as spam.
A solution to this problem might soon be available. The computer industry is fast-tracking a system called e-mail authentication, which will attempt to do for e-mail what caller ID does for telephone calls. E-mail authentication will assure the recipient that the sender actually is the person identified in the message header.
"I have no lack of confidence that, given time, it will be fully implemented, possibly within the next 18 months," said Tom Peterson, vice president of technology for IronPort Systems, an e-mail security firm.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/38096