Posted: 07th Jul, 2004 By: MarkJ
UK ISP ICBroadband has announced the introduction of a new security feature, which is designed to filter specific types of hoax e-mails, such as those asking for your bank details etc.:
ICBROADBAND ENHANCES SECURITY FOR CUSTOMERS
From today, ICBroadband customers will benefit from a new system which helps to protect against hoax e-mails from banks and building societies. The incidence of e-mail scams involving all the major UK banks has increased dramatically over recent months. Such e-mails commonly ask users to visit a site to verify their bank details. The collected details are then used to access customers accounts. The e-mails are usually designed to look like official bank communication.
This new security measure, developed in-house by analysing the various hoax e-mails, automatically detects e-mails which may be hoaxes and appends a security warning to them, reminding users of the potential danger.
We were aware that a large number of these hoax e-mails were passing through our mail servers, and were concerned that users may be duped by the scams. Our normal security system deletes e-mails containing viruses, but we did not want to delete these e-mails, since it can be difficult for a human to distinguish between a hoax and genuine communication from the bank, let alone a machine. Deleting messages would undoubtedly produce false positives. So, we decided to add a warning to suspect messages. This is the ideal system it will not affect genuine bank e-mails, but will remind users to take extra care.
-Bryan Sandford, ICBroadband Security Manager
This new system is also designed to detect hoax e-mails purporting to be from Ebay.
ICBroadband are a provider of ADSL in the UK, who specialise in quality of service and excellent customer support. The ICBroadband 512kbps £22.99 a month product includes e-mail with anti-spam and anti-virus protection, and activation is currently £29.99.
For more details on ICBroadbands products and services, visit http://www.icbroadband.com, or e-mail help@icbroadband.com.The service sounds like a cut down anti-SPAM (junk e-mail) filter, which can be far more effective if targeted towards inception of specific e-mail types.