Free Netcraft Anti-Phishing Toolbar
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I have been using the software program Site Advisor from McAfee for about six months now, and I like it very much. So when I saw Netcraft, I thought I would take a look at it. Netcraft is a toolbar that advises the user of bad sites that you may not wish to visit. It is community driven, which means that it is the users who provide the data for bad websites. The program is free and is simple to download and install.
On their site they describe Netcraft as:
The Toolbar community is effectively a giant neighbourhood watch scheme, empowering the most alert and most expert members to defend everyone within the community against phishing frauds. Once the first recipients of a phishing mail have reported the target URL, it is blocked for community members as they subsequently access the URL. Widely disseminated attacks (people constructing phishing attacks send literally millions of electronic mails in the expectation that some will reach customers of the bank) simply mean that the phishing attack will be reported and blocked sooner.
The Toolbar also:
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- Traps suspicious URLs containing characters which have no common purpose other than to deceive.
- Enforces display of browser navigational controls (toolbar & address bar) in all windows, to defend against pop up windows which attempt to hide the navigational controls.
- Clearly displays sites’ hosting location, including country, helping you to evaluate fraudulent urls (e.g. the real citibank.com or barclays.co.uk sites are unlikely to be hosted in the former Soviet Union).
For more information and to try a free download of Netcraft, take a look here.
If you have tried this free software, let us all know what you think.
Comments are welcome.
Tags: netcraft, free, software, anti-phishing
4 Comments
Lumpy's Corner
August 3rd, 2007
at 4:25am
2007.08.03 - Friday’s Links…
Some of these links are not from this week but the week before. I still thought them of merit. It is very likely that you will not see a post here for a week or so. I must deal……
Mike C.
August 3rd, 2007
at 7:38am
On the occasion that I get phishing scams in my e-mail they are always for accounts I don’t even have. So I sometimes go fill them out with bogus information, as real as the account is. I notice when I do get legitimate e-mail from my bank, it never contains any links in it. It seems only the phisher put in links because their links are bogus.
Ron Schenone
August 3rd, 2007
at 7:42am
Hi Mike C.,
Thanks for your comments, Ron
Fading Whispers: The Chronicles » Blog Archive » Preparing for 3 days of camping
August 31st, 2007
at 4:51pm
[…] Those are the basic 3 that I installed to protect my computer. Another layer of protection will be your browser. I have since switched to Mozilla Firefox and I will not be looking back. For my browser, I’ve got Adblock Plus in operation along with their extra filters that remove the most obnoxious of adverts no the web. I used to have the Netcraft Anti-Phishing toolbar, but I have had a low incidence of those sites due to my diligence in looking carefully at the URLs that I’m sent to. The McAfee SiteAdvisor used to be on computer also, but I got rid of it. I lost interest in it once they started running a “premium” version of their tool. That’s just sh*tty for them to have done that. They bought out the creators of Site Advisor and then, decided to upgrade the tool, but slap a price tag on it (est. $24.99 single user license). That’s just sticking your tongue out at your users. Well, McAfee’s got competition from lots of angles so there! This was as of last year, but I’ve lost interest in them anyway. Firefox comes built with anti-phishing properties so I didn’t need the extra protection. Naturally, I’ll need Internet Explorer because Microsoft has integrated it almost inextricably into their operating system. Furthermore, buyers of new computers will notice that they may come pre-bundled with other security suites. If you don’t trust those programs, don’t be afraid to uninstall them and install programs you trust. Sphere: Related Content […]