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Goodmail CertifiedEmail Service Restores Confidence in Email
American Red Cross, America Online and Yahoo! Adopt New Service to Protect Consumers from Email Fraud and Phishing
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., -- October 26, 2005 -- Goodmail SystemsTM, creators of CertifiedEmail - a new class of e-mail to help shield consumers from spam, fraud and phishing, announced today that the American Red Cross is participating in the charter program for the Goodmail CertifiedEmail service. Goodmail also announced today that leading global providers of email, America Online, Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. will deploy the Goodmail CertifiedEmail service as part of their strategy to protect their users from email scams. The Goodmail CertifiedEmail service identifies e-mail from accredited senders, marks messages with a trust symbol indicating that they are safe to open and assures delivery to the inboxes of intended recipients .
"As the popularity of online fundraising increases, hackers have tried to capitalize on the generosity of the American people. Our organization works hard to protect the public from misleading, unauthorized and fraudulent fundraising," said Kimberly Reckner, Lead Technical Liaison of Online Fundraising for the American Red Cross. "Goodmail's CertifiedEmail service will distinguish authentic communications from fraudulent solicitations and provide an extra layer of security for our donors."
The Red Cross provides donors and friends with current disaster updates and stories about the beneficiaries they aid. The Goodmail CertifiedEmail service will ensure that donation acknowledgements arrive in donors' inboxes and not in junk or bulk mail folders, which has proven to be a challenge, even for legitimate organizations.
Every message that is sent through the Goodmail CertifiedEmail service is embedded with a cryptographically-secure token. These tokens must be detected by participating Internet service providers (ISPs) before the message can be delivered to a recipient's inbox identified as a CertifiedEmail message. The email is clearly labeled with a CertifiedEmail symbol in the user's inbox indicating that the message can be opened with confidence and that it is from an authentic and trusted sender. As a result, Goodmail's CertifiedEmail service improves the consumer email experience, provides greater benefits to legitimate senders and enables mailbox providers with a secure platform to provide premium delivery services to qualified businesses that increasingly rely on electronic communications to service their customers.
"We are creating this new class of email so recipients can be assured that they're receiving secure emails from legitimate senders," said Richard Gingras, chairman and CEO of Goodmail Systems. "It is of critical importance to protect the good name and reputation of a respected and valued organization such as the Red Cross - a charity that provides a service so critical to the American people - in the event that their likeness is copied for illegal uses such as phishing scams and identity theft. Now consumers who receive emails from the American Red Cross can be assured their messages are safe to open."
Availability of the Goodmail CertifiedEmail service through AOL and Yahoo! is expected in the coming months. AOL and Yahoo! Mail combined represent approximately 50% of the U.S. consumer email audience.
About American Red Cross
The American Red Cross is where people mobilize to help their neighbors--across the street, across the country and across the world--in emergencies. Each year, in communities large and small, victims of some 70,000 disasters turn to neighbors familiar and new--the nearly 1 million volunteers and 35,000 employees of the Red Cross. Through almost 900 locally supported chapters, more than 15 million people gain the skills they need to prepare for and respond to emergencies in their homes, communities and world. Some 4 million people give blood--the gift of life--through the Red Cross, making it the largest supplier of blood and blood products in the United States. The Red Cross helps thousands of U.S. service members separated from their families by military duty stay connected. As part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, a global network of 181 national societies, the Red Cross helps restore hope and dignity to the world's most vulnerable people. An average of 91 cents of every dollar the Red Cross spends is invested in humanitarian services and programs. The Red Cross is not a government agency; it relies on donations of time, money, and blood to do its work. Marsha J. Evans is the President and CEO of the American Red Cross.
About Goodmail Systems
Goodmail Systems makes CertifiedEmail™, the industry standard class of trusted email. CertifiedEmail provides a safe and reliable means for consumers to easily identify authentic email messages from legitimate commercial and nonprofit email senders. Each CertifiedEmail is sent with a cryptographically secure token that assures authenticity, and is marked in the inbox with a unique blue ribbon envelope icon, enabling consumers to visually distinguish email messages which are real and sent from email senders with whom they have a pre-existing relationship. Available to email senders meeting strict standards for best practices and low complaint rates, it is the only class of email available that assures delivery of all opt-in email messages to the inbox, with links and images automatically rendered intact, yielding measurable improvements in email campaign effectiveness. CertifiedEmail has been adopted by seven of the nation's top ten email mailbox providers, and is in use by 500 commercial, government and non-profit senders. It is supported in North America and Europe by a wide network of email platforms and service providers.

