Mumbai: Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Lotus Notes, and most other popular desktop e-mail applications can easily be used to clone e-mail ids.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol popularly known as SMTP allows a person to create anyone's display name and official company id, send out mails from that id and potentially inflict huge losses with astounding ease.

Microsoft, which dominates the e-mail client market with its outlook software, admits that this is a serious problem and can only be tackled by making the mail protocol itself more foolproof.

"We along with other industry leaders are trying to change the SMTP protocol so that it becomes possible to identify the sender and the server," says COO, Microsoft Corporation, Doug Hogger.

The increasing cases of abuse have put a question mark on the credibility of e-mail as a mode of secure communication.

"There is no way to establish that the mail is coming from the sender except by physically calling him up and checking," says Cyber expert, Vijay Mukhi.

Companies that have been hit by such mail abuse are now finally veering around towards tackling the menace with software providers.

Setting up encrypted email solutions to authenticate senders is a common solution. But with limited awareness among users of this loophole, fraudsters are having a field day.