Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft Partner with Agari to Reduce Phishing

Four major players of the Internet, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL, unite their forces with Agari, a company that hopes to revolutionize email security, with the purpose of developing new ways to keep email inboxes clean.

According to CNET, Agari analyzes 1.5 billion emails each day in the attempt of trying to find patterns that could allow for the development of sophisticated mechanisms that can detect and counterattack phishing campaigns.

Facebook and other social media websites can access the analysis to see when phishing attacks occur and based on the data, they can create authentication policies with the email provider to make sure it stops the delivery of the malicious messages.

“Facebook can go into the Agari console and see charts and graphs of all the activity going on in their e-mail channel (on their domains and third-party solutions) and see when an attack is going on in a bar chart of spam hitting Yahoo,” says Daniel Raskin, vice president of marketing for Agari.

“They receive a real-time alert and they can construct a policy to push out to carriers (that says) when you see this thing happening don't deliver it, reject it.”

The fact that the company sweeps through all those emails may raise some privacy concerns, but Raskin claims that they are only provided with the links contained in them, not the actual content. They send these links to the organization whose name is being used in the phishing so they can take immediate action.

Google already implemented anti-phishing and anti-fraud policies for Gmail users since 2004, but with the help of Agari, they can take it to another level.

"Proper coordination between senders and receivers is the best way to cut down on the transmission of unauthorized mail, and AGARI's approach helps simplify this process," said Google Product Manager Adam Dawes.