eBay.ie launches anti-phishing service

23-03-2006

by Charlie Taylor

Online auction website eBay.ie has launched a new service to help protect users against 'phishing' e-mails which attempt to gain personal details from members.

The "My Messages" service is an attempt to get around the problem of spoof e-mails sent to customers purporting to come from eBay. Such messages often ask users for information such as passwords and credit card details.

The new service provides eBay users with a secure message inbox within their password secured "My eBay" pages. Any customer service e-mails that are sent to an individual's personal e-mail address are also forwarded to their secure inbox on the website. As third parties cannot send e-mails to this address, users can simply check it to see whether the message is replicated in order to ascertain whether it's genuine or not.

eBay has proven immensely popular with internet users around the world and the auction site now has more than 180 million users globally. However, over the past few years many customers have fallen victim to authentic looking e-mails, which ask users for personal details. Such information is then used by fraudsters to exploit consumers for financial gain.

"Phishing is an internet-wide issue and one that all e-commerce and financial services sites need to tackle. We believe that combining My Messages with our current anti-phishing tools makes eBay as impregnable to phishers as it is possible to be," said Garreth Griffith, head of Trust and Safety at eBay.

"'My Messages' offers greater security to users by ensuring they have a private, password-protected system that cannot be used by any third parties."

In addition to launching the new service, eBay is also recommending that its customers download the free eBay Toolbar, which comes with "Account Guard" technology. The toolbar identifies when a user is on an official eBay or PayPal site and shows green when this is the case.

The new service forms part of a new online safety education campaign which has been launched by eBay.ie. The company is asking customers who receive suspicious emails claiming to come from eBay or PayPal to forward them on to either spoof@ebay.ie or spoof@paypal.com so that they company can take action against the senders.