Phishing scams claiming to be from PayPal and eBay are being targeted by a new secure email service launched today. PayPal, the online payments provider and eBay have announced a collaborative effort with Yahoo! to use the firm's anti-phishing technology.

The partnership sees the firms instigating a new email authentication, DomainKeys,. The technology safety upgrade will be rolled out globally over the next several weeks to all users of Yahoo! Mail.

Michael Barrett, Chief Information Security Officer at PayPal comments: "PayPal and eBay's and adoption of email authentication technology and this aggressive move on the part of Yahoo! Mail are significant steps forward in the fight to protect consumers against email-based crimes. While there is clearly no silver bullet for solving the problems of phishing and identity theft, today's announcement is great news for our customers who rely on Yahoo! Mail."

DomainKeys technology provides a unique way to verify the authenticity of email messages, allowing Internet service providers to determine if messages are real and should be delivered to a customer's inbox. The collaborative effort between Yahoo!, eBay and PayPal will result in the blocking of unauthenticated email, reducing the volume of fraudulent email received by consumers and lowering their risk of falling for phishing attacks.

"By reducing the risk of phishing scams, Yahoo! Mail now offers a much safer Web mail service for eBay and PayPal users, and this protection will benefit the larger Yahoo! Mail community as well," said John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo! Mail. "We look forward to helping to facilitate continued industry adoption of DomainKeys and the proposed standard DomainKeys Identified Mail, as we continue to increase our efforts to safeguard the inbox."

"Today is a significant milestone for the added protection of millions of eBay and PayPal customers," said Dave Cullinane, chief information security officer at eBay. "Through industry cooperation, we can collectively try to stamp out phishing and other email scams. We welcome Yahoo!'s commitment to this endeavor, applaud its leadership role within the Internet service provider community, and encourage others join in the fight to keep consumers safe from phishing attacks."

Yahoo!, EBay and PayPal are in the process of transitioning their systems from DomainKeys to the proposed standard DomainKeys Identified Mail. The implementation is expected to be complete in the coming months.