Do I Really Have to Enter my Social Security Number?
IE 7 Tops the Anti Phishing List!
So, my sister, whom I love dearly, but question whether or not I did the right thing wiring her house for broadband, called me recently and asked, "Michael, could I really have a Pay Pal account in China?"
"Ummmm, no." I responded. She had nearly fallen victim to one of the innumerable phishing scams plaguing users today. The bad guys create legitimate looking emails that appear to come from legitimate companies--Microsoft has not been immune--to try and steal people's identities.
Browser technology has been developed and integrated to combat these scams. In a recent study Microsoft's IE 7 Anti-Phishing filter rated top of the heap--and, I believe, it will do even better on Windows Vista with something called protected mode (https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/IETechCol/dnwebgen/ProtectedMode.asp)!
"IE 7.0 ended up with a score of 172, only four ahead Netcraft’s toolbar, which scored 168. Google/Firefox was a distant third with 106, eBay fourth at 92, Earthlink ScamBlocker fifth with 76, GeoTrust Trustwatch sixth with 67, Netscape 8.1 seventh with 56, and McAfee SiteAdvisor coming in last place."