PayPal knows it's an attractive target for phishers, which is why it's stepping up is efforts to slow the proliferation of phishing attacks.

Silicon.com reports that PayPal is taking a three-pronged approach: education, technology and partnerships. Among the technology strategies, the company wants to expand the use of digital e-mail signatures, having ISPs block e-mails that appear to be sent from PayPal but lack the correct digital signature. The company is already doing this with Yahoo and claims to have blocked 50 million phishing e-mails from reaching customers.

According to Dark Reading, PayPal also plans to support Extended Validation SSL so that it can warn users when they are about to go to a suspicious site. In addition, the company is testing software from Iconix that could be embedded in e-mail and allow PCs to identify signed message.

But PayPal cannot combat phishing alone. IT BusinessEdge blogger Carl Weinschenk has covered the nasty trend and notes that education is the best way to handle the threat. Michael Barrett, PayPal's chief information security officer, says partnerships also are key. In addition to Yahoo, PayPal also works with AOL, Google, Verisign and various government bodies.