OpenDNS, the award-winning navigation service that makes the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable, today announced its PhishTank anti-phishing service has seen a half-million individual phishing scams reported in the two years since the service was launched.
PhishTank is a community Web site, operated by OpenDNS, where anyone can submit, verify, track and share phishing data. OpenDNS, the world's largest and fastest growing DNS service, uses PhishTank data to keep its users around the world safe from phishing scams.
Prior to the availability of PhishTank, Internet users were largely left without a path to recourse when they received an email they suspected fraudulent. There were outlets to report suspected phishes, but none provided visibility into the verification process or made the data it accumulated public.
PhishTank provides Internet users a place to report suspected phishes, a venue to take action by voting on phishes submitted by others and visibility into the entire verification process. When a reported, suspected phish is verified by the PhishTank community, it is added to a feed of known phishes that is open and available for use to Internet service providers.
Among those companies and services leveraging PhishTank data to keep their users safe online, in addition to OpenDNS, are Yahoo! Mail, McAfee Inc., Kaspersky Labs, Career Builder.com, Mozilla Corp., makers of the FireFox browser, and Opera Software, makers of the Opera browser, among others.
In the two years since PhishTank launched in October 2006, PhishTank has seen more than five hundred thousand individal phishing attacks reported, and verified and thwarted more than three hundred and fifty thousand attacks, protecting Internet users around the globe.
No other anti-phishing effort has made such a significant and positive impact on the global phishing problem. Earlier this year, respected technology publication PC World awarded PhishTank a coveted "Best of 2008" award to honor its accomplishments in global phish fighting.
"We initially set out to develop PhishTank because the phishing data available at the time was both expensive and poor quality. We wanted to create a clearinghouse of the most accurate and up-to-date phishing information anywhere, and make it available to everyone. We've accomplished that goal," said David Ulevitch. Founder of OpenDNS. "As with any milestone, our ideas of what is now possible have only grown and we look forward to another year of amazing growth at PhishTank and OpenDNS."
About OpenDNS
OpenDNS is the world's largest and fastest-growing DNS provider, making the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable for millions of people around the world. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company operates a new kind of recursive Domain Name System (DNS) service that enables the delivery of services like Web content filtering and industry-leading phishing protection through the DNS, free and without requiring users to download or install software. OpenDNS is thoroughly committed to operating the best DNS platform in the world and to improving the Internet. For more information about OpenDNS, please visit: http://www.opendns.com
About PhishTank
Launched in October 2006 to coincide with National Cyber Security Awareness Month, PhishTank is the world's only collaborative clearinghouse for phishing data. PhishTank employs a sophisticated voting system that requires the community to vote "phish" or "not phish," reducing the possibility of false positives and improving the data's overall breadth and coverage.
PhishTank makes all phishing data it accumulates public and available via programmable APIs, which allow other software developers to incorporate anti-phishing elements into their tools. The open access is intended to encourage the sharing of information and increase the chance of eliminating phishing all together. For more information about PhishTank, please visit: http://www.phishtank.com |
