Brightmail is no phisher-man's friend

Anti-spam giant Brightmail has joined forces with US ISP Earthlink to combat the growing menace of 'phishing' scams.

Brightmail will share data from its probe network - which processes billions of fraudulent emails per month - with Earthlink for inclusion in the company's free toolbar scam blocking application.

The probe network represents millions of decoy email accounts - which work on the 'honeypot' principle. By definition, anything which finds its way into these accounts is classed as unsolicited and the data is collected by Brightmail's spam filtering service.

Data related to phishing scams will now be shared in realtime with the Earthlink toolbar.

Phishing scams typically involve an official looking email which claims to be from a trusted source such as a bank or established e-tail site. It will often claim a server upgrade or new security measures have been brought in which require users to re-enter their details - such as name, credit card number, account number and address.

Customers of many banks, including Barclays, Citibank, HSBC, NatWest and LloydsTSB have been exploited in this way, as those who fall for the scams hand personal data and the key to their bank accounts to the scammers who promptly clean them out.

Enrique Salem, CEO of Brightmail, said: "Phishing has become one of the most dangerous types of email threats and we are pleased to share our phishing data with EarthLink to strengthen its toolbar."

The rise of phishing scams has been prolific - based on a number of high-profile successes.

The number of phishing scam emails detected by Brightmail has risen from 300 million messages in August 2003 to over 2.9 billion messages in March 2004. The company predicts that five per cent of all worldwide email is now made up of phishing scams.

The toolbar can be downloaded for free from CNET's Download.com website.