We just released the beta of the Anti-Phishing Add-in for the MSN Search Toolbar.
WHAT IS PHISHING?
For those of you living in a cave, phishing is the act of sending HTML-based emails out to strangers that look like they’re from eBay or Paypal or any other institution in the hopes that the reader will click on a "deceptive" hyperlink in the email. Usually, this link appears to go to a legitimate site when in reality, the web site is a mockup designed to ask for and collect critical information like a a Visa Credit Card number or a Social Security number or even a Bank login and password.
(You can learn more about "phishing" by going to: http://safety.msn.com/phishing)
WHAT DOES THE MSN ADDIN PHISHING FILTER DO?
The addin for MSN Search Toolbar will protect the user to going to potentially illicit or deceptive sites that disguise themselves as legitimate web sites and really send the user to illegitimate locations just to collect their personal information.
The Phishing Filter Add-in offers access to the beta version of a new dynamic online service, updated several times an hour to warn you and help protect your personal information from these fraudulent websites by:
- Scanning websites you visit and warning you if they are potentially suspicious.
- Dynamically checking the web sites you visit with up to the hour online information via an online service run by Microsoft and blocking you from sharing personal information if a site is a known phishing website.
DOWNLOAD: http://addins.msn.com/phishingfilter/
(You must have the MSN Search Toolbar already installed to use the Phishing Filter.)
A Note on Internet Explorer 7.0 & Anti-phishing: This technology is basically the same technology that users can expect to get from Internet Explorer 7.0, which will be available to Windows Vista users or Windows XP Service Pack 2 users in 2006. There are a few differences:
- IE7 does opt-in for activating the phishing filter the first time a user goes to a suspicious site. MSN the opt-in is at installation.
- IE7 will navigate you away from a known phishing page and make you have to navigate there notwithstanding. MSN just blocks your ability to enter data on the page.
- The way to report a page as phishing is slightly different in each one.
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