Anti-phishing tool
I had run across a link that netcraft was trying to combat phishing schemes and I didn’t have time for a detailed look at the time. I’ve since revisited and found their Netcraft toolbar. I’m impressed, it installs in either Internet Explorer (under Windows), or Mozilla Firefox (all platforms.)
For starters I’m impressed because of the Firefox compatibility it gives me a good means to test it under Linux. I’m impressed also at it’s functionality…. it gives a risk rating which in part seems to be based on the length of time the domain has been registered (perhaps also the duration of registration. I mention this because I have two (well more actually) domains on the same IP based machine and one shows up as a low risk (1 out of 10) that has been registered for several years, the other, which was registered recently is 10 out of 10 and is listed as a new domain. It also gives the rank of the page (among netcraft toolbar users?) a link to the site report, flag to indicate the country of origin of the host machine and a link to the owner of the IP block.
Additionally, the toolbar blocks access to known phishing sites and gives the option of reporting a phishing site (to netcraft), or to report an incorrectly tagged phishing site. They also have links in the toolbar menu to their site survey, “what’s that site running” tool, summaries of the most popular sites, phishiest countries, phishiest service providers, and a LONG list of other services that netcraft provides.
I’ve got to admit, most of my experience with toolbars has been under windows and has been literally removing buggy, resource hogging, ad inducing pests of an idea. But, after trying out Google’s toolbar and now Netcraft’s I feel as though this particular software add-on is really redeeming itself. If you haven’t installed the Netcraft toolbar I would highly recommend it. It might just protect you against a clever phisher.