For Immediate Release:
August 16, 2005 |
|
Email
and web marketing firm among first to adopt cutting
edge technology
HARTFORD - Peer
360, a preeminent e-mail and web marketing firm, today
announced that they are Sender ID compliant. Developed
by Microsoft in response to the growing abuse of e-mail
by illegitimate senders and businesses, Sender ID
endeavors to control both spam and phishing by making
it harder for senders to forge their addresses.
Bob Watson, President of Peer 360 said once their organization learned of the availability of such technology, there was never any question that they (and several other companies owned by parent company Horizon Marketing Group) would implement it immediately.
"The risk of not becoming Sender ID compliant was too great. Really, it was a no-brainer for us when you consider that the lack of such technology contributes to the continual sabotage of electronic mail's usefulness."
In essence, Sender ID and other similar programs such as SPF, DKIM and FairUCE, is able to deduce whether an e-mail that alleges to come from a certain Internet domain, does in fact actually emanate from the e-mail servers connected with that particular domain. Samantha McManus, a business strategy manager at Microsoft says that in today's society, there is "an identity crisis for e-mail."
"The e-mail infrastructure was built in a different era when you actually knew who was sending you e-mail and you did not have to worry."
Gartner, a research firm, discovered that more than 80 percent of on-line users in the U.S. are suspicious of e-mails they receive from persons they do not know or whose user names they do not recognize. Gartner also found that over two million adults in the U.S. lost money (to the tune of $929 million dollars) in phishing attacks during the course of one calendar year.
The cost of not establishing Sender ID or a similar program was embraced by companies such as eBay, Bank of America, and Peer 360. However, as constructive as such technology appears to be, analysts say that unless enough companies and individuals get on board and begin using the technology, e-mail abuse will continue to grow and could eventually become unmanageable.
"If we don't reach critical mass on the authentification of legitimate senders, there are going to be dire consequences," predicts Dave Lewis, vice president of marketing at StrongMail.
"Typically, you don't have to purchase new hardware or software. For smaller organizations like ours, really the hardest part was doing an inventory of our mail servers. Of course, we'll also have to manage those records, but the rewards of using Sender ID have already far outweighed any inconvenience it might have caused us initially."
Tindall concludes, "It's
in everyone's best interest - big companies, small
companies, individuals - to begin utilizing this technology.
We're never going to get ahead of the abuses we've
already experienced, unless as a society, we decide
to take a stand against those persons who have corrupted
the system. We have adopted the Sender ID protocol,
because we believe it is a key to fighting spam, phishing,
and a number of other e-mail exploitations."
Peer360 (www.Peer360.com)
designs software products that empower individuals
and organizations to acquire, develop and retain customer
relationships. Peer360 is focused on creating innovative
and powerful tools to effectively and efficiently
communicate with target audiences.
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