Microsoft Anti-Phishing and Small Businesses
Microsoft has a new anti-phishing service in Internet Explorer 7 that will turn the address bar green and display the website owner’s identity when surfers visit on-line merchants previously approved as legitimate. So far, so good. But the service is only available to corporations: not to sole proprietorships, partnerships, or individuals.
Of course, if a merchant’s bar doesn’t turn green it doesn’t mean that they’re bad. It’ll be white, which indicates “no information.” There are also yellow and red indications, corresponding to “suspicious” and “known fraudulent site.” But small businesses are worried that customers will be afraid to buy from non-green sites.
That’s possible, but it’s more likely that users will learn that the marker isn’t reliable and start to ignore it.
Any white-list system like this has two sources of error. False positives, where phishers get the marker. And false negatives, where legitimate honest merchants don’t. Any system like this has to effectively deal with both.
EDITED TO ADD (12/21): Research paper: “Phinding Phish: An Evaulation of Anti-Phishing Toolbars,” by L. Cranor, S. Egleman, J. Hong, and Y. Zhang.
Daniel • December 21, 2006 7:24 AM
ITYM marker…