Industry Collaboration

Improving Online Trust and Confidence

Published: December 1, 2005 | Updated: July 19, 2007

Leading e-mail infrastructure providers, services providers, and security and technology vendors share the challenges of spam, phishing, and identity theft—and they share the responsibility to collaborate to counter online and messaging abuse. Solutions must involve coordinated efforts on many levels throughout the Internet ecosystem to help drive technical collaboration and to develop effective guidelines and best practices to address these problems.

Industry Working Groups, Organizations, and Alliances
At Microsoft, we work closely with dozens of industry organizations and trade associations to share information and coordinate efforts toward common goals. Through supporting and serving in leadership roles with these organizations, we can jointly improve online trust and confidence.

Reputation and Data Services Providers
Reputation services play a critical role in e-mail authentication, Web site verification, and identity verification. Microsoft works closely with several companies that provide such reputation services to improve the deliverability of legitimate e-mail and affirm the trustworthiness of Web sites.

To provide an unparalleled level of protection from phishing exploits, Microsoft has agreements with several commercial data providers to dynamically provide information to Microsoft on thousands of confirmed phishing Web sites. Microsoft has integrated this data into the Microsoft Phishing Filter technology, which is available for the MSN Search Toolbar and for, Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2. Today this data is helping improve online safety for more than 75 million users worldwide.

Sender ID Support and Solutions
Sender ID is the leading e-mail authentication protocol, and it has been adopted by more than 10 million domain holders worldwide. Several third-party solutions are available today to help receiving networks protect their users and employees from these escalating online threats.