Win an iPod for Reporting Phishing Sites!   - 2,247 Views, 1 Comment

At last, a legitimate “win an iPod” site! In fact, it’s none other than Netcraft! Netcraft have just announced that anybody who reports a phishing site through their service will be placed in a drawing for the month in which they reported the site, and then one lucky phish reporter will win a “top of the line iPod.”

Netcraft, long known as one of the premiere and serious techie security sites, offers a wide range of Internet security services and alerts. One of those is their Netcraft Toolbar plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The Netcraft Toolbar includes, among other thing, a reporting function which allows one to report phishing sites back to Netcraft with a single click. This is in part how they keep their own anti-phishing efforts up-to-date. Explains Netcraft, “The Netcraft Toolbar is available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and serves as a giant neighborhood watch scheme for the Internet, in which members who encounter a phishing fraud can act to defend the larger community of users against the attack. Once the first recipients of a phishing mail have reported the target URL, it is blocked for toolbar users who subsequently access the URL and widely disseminated attacks simply mean that the phishing attack will be reported and blocked sooner.”

Nifty, eh?

Thousands of people use the Netcraft Toolbar to report phishing sites, and do so just because either it’s the right thing to do, or, as Netcraft Toolbar user Alan put it, “Every day I feel that I’m doing my small bit to make the Internet a safer place.”

And Alan, it turns out, is the first winner under Netcraft’s new “win an iPod” drawing. Said Alan, “As well as the satisfaction of a job well done, it’s a lot of fun to have a shiny new toy to play with.”

If you would like to have a chance every month at winning a shiny new toy, while also helping to take down those phishers, just grab Netcraft’s toolbar (if you haven’t already), and start reporting those phishing sites!

You can get Netcraft’s toolbar here