With an inherent emphasis in “privacy-by-default”, Hoplite Technology, a cybersecurity SaaS developer, launched a free tool named Anti-Phishing Bot (APBot), a cloud-based solution that uses email sender’s behaviours and community crowdsourcing to protect vulnerable everyday-users from phishing attacks.

A phishing email is a form of cyberattacks where cybercriminals impersonate a trusted party to gain access to sensitive information. Due to the lack of ways to verify the identity of the senders, everyday users without technical training will often find it difficult to distinguish a phishing attack as the red flags are hidden in different parts of an email.

To protect users’ privacy, APBot follows the “privacy-by-default” principle to detect email frauds based on the sender’s behaviour, such as email delivery path, and network profile without reading the email content.

Unlike many anti-phishing solutions are designed for IT Administrators with cybersecurity knowledge, APBot is accessible for everyday users: users can detect and report a phishing email with one click; at the same time, similar emails will be flagged within the APBot community, and through this ecosystem, the detection accuracy of the AI-assisted tool is expected to improve, the company said.

“Traditionally, identifying phishing emails requires training and network knowledge, but APBot has simplified the process. We believe senior citizens and students who are more vulnerable to social engineering will benefit from the protections offered by APBot,” said Antony Ma, Founder at Hoplite Technology and Chairman of Cloud Security Alliance Hong Kong and Macau Chapter

The ease of use is one of the advantages of using APBot which does not require the users to have any relevant training and can be integrated with popular email tools, such as Gmail, Office 365 and Hotmail, as an add-on without software installation.