A new protection from phishing goes live - welcome to
Extended Validation Certification (the green Address Bar in
IE7)

Rather than repeat content on my blog here, please feel free to review my
article about Extended Validation and how to make sure that it is working for
you in Internet Explorer 7:

Have you seen the green bar? Hooray for high assurance!

Web site owners need to make sure that their site works with their new Extended
Validation Certificate - don't make the mistake that Verisign has made:

Verisign needs to sort out their site so that it works with their Extended
Validation (High Assurance) Certificate

I don't know if this is related... but a couple of days after I upgraded to IE7,
MySpace was flagged as a possible phishing site. I was redirected to a warning
page. My first thought was that MS was briefly able to acquire some traffic
intel from this status. Could be wrong though. 

Which then begs the question, with the anti-phishing feature enabled, does MS
gather browsing statistics? If so... what a gold mine for them!! Could be a
great opportunity to provide a service like Alexa. I'm sure if this is the case
however, there could be a little PR backlash.

Just rambling. I'm always glad to see new features that help protect the
consumer/nonExpert experience the internet more safely.

Great post, Sandi. This plainly merits attention. Truth to tell, failure to use
this would be asinine.

That is great info, Sandi--thanks! 

BetaNews posted an article yesterday about the expansion of the IE7 Phishing
filter and the results its getting so far. Here's a clip:

Microsoft says that since the launch of IE7, the browser has blocked over 10
million attempts by users to visit phishing Web sites. Currently, over 1 million
blocks are being performed each week, and through feedback from IE7 users, over
100,000 phishing sites are added to blacklists every week.

I know phishing is growing like crazy, but I find these efforts reassuring...

Waggler:

That is great info, Sandi--thanks! 

BetaNews posted an article yesterday about the expansion of the IE7 Phishing
filter and the results its getting so far. Here's a clip:

Microsoft says that since the launch of IE7, the browser has blocked over 10
million attempts by users to visit phishing Web sites. Currently, over 1 million
blocks are being performed each week, and through feedback from IE7 users, over
100,000 phishing sites are added to blacklists every week.

I know phishing is growing like crazy, but I find these efforts reassuring...

Why?

Why don't we look at it from the phisher's POV! 

All they are doing is being industrious and making quite a bunch of adages come
true, e.g., A fool and his (non-gender specific) money are soon parted, There is
one born everyday, etc.

For these efforts they are villified?

For goodness sakes, the letters/emails I get all start out with: I AM MINISTER
XXXXX AND I WANT TO GIVE YOU MONEY....

Being of Nigerian descent, I find these phishing filters to be singularly unkind
to the legion of hard-working Nigerians trying to send money to greedians
abroad.

As a result of this, they will now have to find gainful employment. 

A shame.

(I tried, but I couldn't work a racial angle into this post)