Here are some tools to help folk worried by all this identity theft/fraud/phishing thang.
Protecteer LLC has today released SignupShield 2.0, an add-on for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that, among other things “automatically creates a hard to guess password and a disposable email address, each time a user signs-up with a new Web site”.
It then automatically “fills up up sign-up forms, saves and tracks usage or change of passwords. When a user needs to provide sign-in credentials to a site, SignupShield does it automatically.” With the disposable email address that it automatically uses, “users can easily block any misbehaving sources of emails. Shielding is 100%, no false positives.” SignupShield is available for $29.95. A free, limited version is offered as well.
Then there’s Cloudmark’s Anti-Fraud, also out today, “the first free fraud prevention service for email users available today”. Cloudmark’s SpamNet uses real-time feedback from users, which has, the company says, “protected the SpamNet community from all email threats — viruses, worms, spam and even the most devious fraud messages — since the product was launched”. Cloudmark also uses a Rating program, an “email reputation system that fingerprints those messages sent by legitimate businesses and matches them at the end-user level, correctly allowing them through every time”. Taken together, the company says, the two “rebuild trust between companies and consumers, ensuring that the email from PayPal waiting for you in your inbox was positively sent by PayPal, Inc.
New users can download SpamNet for Outlook or Outlook Express and get free anti-spam and anti-fraud service for 30 days here. After the trial, the regular price is $4 per month, or $40 per year.
I’ll level with you: I haven’t tried either, but I plan to.