Windows Anti-Phishing Tool Free from Netcraft   12/28/2004 - 1,869 views, 6 Comments

Summary: Many of you have heard Aunty pile accolades on anti-spam program Cloudmark for their unique and highly effective way of stopping spam for their users: they have a network of several dozens of thousands of "reporters", and when a certain number of ...

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Many of you have heard Aunty pile accolades on anti-spam program Cloudmark for their unique and highly effective way of stopping spam for their users: they have a network of several dozens of thousands of “reporters”, and when a certain number of them all report back to the Cloudmark mothership that a given piece of email is spam, that spam is marked as such for all users.

The good people at Netcraft apparently like this model as well, as they have developed an anti-phishing tool which emulates the model.

Called the Netcraft Toolbar, and driven by the “Toolbar community”, the Netcraft Toolbar is a… well… toolbar, which you can install on your Windows browser. When a certain number of the Toolbar community members report a given URL as being a “phish”, that URL becomes blocked for all users of the Netcraft Toolbar, effectively protecting them from becoming phishfood.

A nifty idea, particularly if their reporting is robust and reliable. Given that it is coming from Netcraft, one would assume this to be the case.

The Netcraft Toolbar is available for Windows 2000 and XP “or later”, and is available at http://toolbar.netcraft.com/.

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6 Comments »

  1. Windows Anti-Phishing Tool Free from Netcraft
    Many of you have heard Aunty pile accolades on anti-spam program Cloudmark for their unique and highly effective way of stopping spam for their users: they have a network of several dozens of thousands of “reporters”, and when a certain…

    Trackback by Lockergnome's Windows Fanatics — 12/28/2004 @ 9:51 pm

  2. Again, another blind alley! Netcraft’s concept is a great one, but the article was sorta spoiled by the Lockergnome blind worship of Godfather Gates. I had to go to Netcraft’s FAQ to find out that their toolbar was available only for Internet Explorer, leaving the more security-conscious of us out in the cold. Of course, since we ARE more security-conscious, we users of Firefox, ec., probably have less need for the toolbar…

    Comment by Walter Krankheit — 12/29/2004 @ 5:28 am

  3. If you read the EULA, the toolbar may/will have advertisements and Netcraft says it is not assuming responsibility for ad content, etc…

    Comment by Carl — 12/29/2004 @ 9:15 am

  4. Walter: I was thinking the very same thing. Come to think of it, I’m a bit surprised nobody’s come up with an idea like this for Firefox yet…

    Comment by codeman38 — 12/29/2004 @ 9:27 am

  5. The best antiphishing tool ? CallingID !
    There is no better. Period.
    It shows the domain name owner, registrant, host,..etc.
    You don’t need more than that. Plus it changes the color from green or yellow to red, when the owner is hiding or unknown.

    Comment by Zal — 1/17/2007 @ 5:45 am

  6. I agree with the guy from post 5
    CallingID is by far better then Netcraft and not only because they support Firefox, IE, most big mail clients, IM clients and MS Office but also because of their accuracy.

    If you’re looking for an ad-less toolbar that outdoes Netcraft use CallingID or SiteAdvisor!
    (Though the only reason to use SA instead of CallingID is SA’s download appraisal feature)

    Comment by Shay Levi — 2/8/2007 @ 3:54 pm

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