Yahoo is teaming up with eBay and its PayPal unit to block fake e-mails that are targeted towards Yahoo Mail users. Yahoo’s own technology called DomainKeys is being used to authenticate the senders of e-mails.

A quote from the article at Reuters:

The technology upgrade will be made available to Yahoo Mail users worldwide over the next several weeks, the company said.
“It is a big step forward for consumers in defense against the bad guys,” John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail, said in a phone interview.

DomainKeys verifies the DNS domain of an e-mail sender and the message integrity. The technology will be rolled out globally over the next few weeks.

Phishing scams have been a major worry for financial institutions, faking authenticity and making users divulge sensitive information. Cooperation and collaboration among various technology entities are a welcome sign in an age where “standards” are the hardest to standardize.

More news links:

Yahoo! mail to block fake eBay and PayPal mails (ZDNet Asia)

PayPal, Yahoo! and eBay begin roll-out of authentication technology (Computer World)

Yahoo!, eBay, PayPal team for anti-phish push (iT Wire)