Firefox Gets Anti-phishing Toolbar

Firefox Gets Anti-phishing Toolbar

Techtree News Staff, May 26, 2005 1514 hrs IST

Internet service company Netcraft, has helped increase the security for Firefox by launching an anti-phishing plug-in.

Netcraft the Internet service company has helped increase the security for Firefox by launching a plug-in that can help users avoid phishing scams.

The Netcraft Toolbar blocks phishing Web sites that have been reported by other users. The company released a Firefox version of the anti-phishing toolbar that's been available for Microsoft's Internet Explorer since December 2004 and more than 7,000 phishing sites have been detected and blocked since then.

Phishing is a method to steal confidential information such as passwords, credit card numbers, and other financial information. The attacks usually combine spam e-mail and fraudulent Web pages that look like legitimate sites. Users feed in their information on sites that is then sent to hackers.

Other than blocking phishing sites the toolbar includes other features to help users become more security-aware when surfing. According to the Netcraft site, the toolbar includes a risk rating for Web sites, as well as information about the popularity of a site and the country in which the site is hosted.

The company stated that the toolbar will also trap suspicious Web addresses based on the characters used and enforces display of the browser navigation buttons to defend against pop-up windows that may attempt to hide those buttons.

The Firefox toolbar runs on any operating system supported by Firefox and is available for free download from Netcraft. Click here to download the toolbar.