SES Chicago - December 7-11, 2009

September 11, 2006

Google's Toolbar Anti-Phishing Blacklist

Philipp Lenssen reports on a whitelist of URLs found at sb.google.com which appears to be a whitelist of safe URLs to be used for the Google Toolbar. Be digging deeper into the forums area of Google Blogoscoped, you can see that the this whitelist will prevent the "Web Forgery" warning in the Google Toolbar from popping up on those particular sites.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:25 AM | Permalink

July 28, 2006

TrustWatch Extension Puts Phishing Warnings Into Google, Yahoo & MSN Results

Using Firefox or Flock? Now you can get an extension from TrustWatch that will may help you spot phishing scams in your search results at Google, Yahoo and MSN.

TrustWatch & MSN Offer Anti-Phishing Tools To Searchers & Surfers covers how TrustWatch already does this on its own Ask-powered search engine. But the extension lets you get TrustWatch info inserted into results at Google, Yahoo and MSN (but oddly not Ask).

That article above also explains how MSN has an anti-phishing tool you can download. There are several others, as covered in these past articles:

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:06 AM | Permalink

May 31, 2006

Google Anti-Phishing Will Be Part Of Firefox 2.0

As rumored, Google is to power the anti-phishing capabilities in Firefox 2.0. Firefox 2.0 Bakes in Anti-Phish Antidote from InternetNews.com has more details.

While Microsoft makes the dominant Internet Explorer 7 which will be bundled with Vista, Google has strong ties to the upstart Firefox browser, employing key developers and supporting Firefox with a search affiliate deal worth millions of dollars. Both browsers will have state of the art anti-phishing capability, protecting users from online scams that steal identities among other crimes.

Firefox has approximately 20% of the browser market share and appears to consistently gain ground against Internet Explorer. This may be because influential technically-minded people favor Firefox and promote its use.

By employing key developers and supplying technology support, since Mozilla Corporation is snug tight with Google, perhaps Google should simply purchase Mozilla with its war chest if and when a tipping point were to occur, and abandon any plans to ever produce their own browser client.

Posted by Detlev Johnson at 7:53 AM | Permalink

May 23, 2006

New Tool Scandoo Scans for Scumware in Search Results

The reports of hackers poisoning search results by optimizing landing pages that included links to viruses, spyware and other malware alarmed many people. Now a free new service called Scandoo serves as a front-end to Ask, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo, scanning results for potential nasties. It identifies potential threats in real-time without requiring a plug-in or download. "Clean" results are labeled with a green checkmark; those with potential threats are labeled with a red "X" (see it in action with this search for "warez"). More about Scandoo and how it works here.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 2:39 PM | Permalink

March 10, 2006

Google to Protect Firefox with Phishing Shield?

News.com reports that Google may be providing the technology to protect Firefox against phishing scams. Google has released Firefox Extensions For Anti-Phishing in the past and we all know that Google and Firefox have very good relations. Google included Firefox in the Google Pack and has paid Firefox's lead engineer. There is also discussion on this topic at ThreadWatch and at WebmasterWorld.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:37 AM | Permalink

December 15, 2005

Google Firefox Extensions For Anti-Phishing & Popping-Up Google Blog Search Results

New Firefox extensions over at Google highlights that there's a new anti-phishing tool now out for Firefox users plus a new add-on that lets you see what people are saying about pages you visit through Google Blog Search.

Google Safe Browsing for Firefox is the anti-phishing tool, similar to the Phishing Filter Add-In for Internet Explorer with the MSN Search Toolbar. More about that in our past post, TrustWatch & MSN Offer Anti-Phishing Tools To Searchers & Surfers.

Blogger Web Comments is the Firefox extension to show you what people are blogging about relating to pages you are viewing.

What happens is that when you go to a particular page, a little window pops-up in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. It will show you a comment from someone on a blog that's linking to the page you are viewing. You can also click to see more "comments," which is a handy way to check what people are blogging about the page you are reading.

These are NOT just people using Blogger that are commenting via blogs. Instead, what Google's doing is simply generating a backlink lookup on Google Blog Search and showing you the summary of the first thing listed on that page.

For example, here are the backlinks to the Search Engine Watch home page. The first thing on that page at the moment is:

Google Adds Music Search Feature 33 minutes ago by Bruce Houghton GoogleGoogle this morning added a music search feature to it's popular search engine. Type in for example "Pink Floyd" and the top result featured includes a photo of the artist, a bit of information, and a link to "More music results ... hypebot - http://hypebot.typepad.com/hypebot/

In my pop-up box, that got turned into:

hypebot GoogleGoogle this morning added a music search feature to it's popular search engine. Type in for...

You can also use the "Add comment" link in the pop-up box to add your own comments about the page. What this really does is send you to your own Blogger-based blog (or suggests you open one). But to "comment," you simply need to have a page that shows up in Google Blog Search that links to the page someone is viewing. Remember, however, that over time your "comment" will drop down the list.

More about Google Blog Search is covered in our past articles, Google Launches Industrial Strength Blog Search and Thoughts On & Poking At Google Blog Search.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:28 AM | Permalink

September 27, 2005

TrustWatch & MSN Offer Anti-Phishing Tools To Searchers & Surfers

TrustWatch is a new Ask Jeeves-powered search engine designed to give you a green, yellow or red light warning on whether to trust pages listed in its results. It follows on the release of an anti-phishing add-on for users of the MSN Search toolbar.

At TrustWatch, the warnings are to help you know if you are reaching a fake site or one that's "phishing" for you to reveal personal information.

For example, imagine you were trying to reach the Bank Of America site. It's possible that someone might create a site that looks like the real BofA site and ranks well for a search on the company's name. A good search engine shouldn't let this happen, but it still can occur. Even more likely, it can happen if you search using a slight misspelling.

TrustWatch places colored rating icons next to each listing. Green means the listing has been verified as real and trustworthy by a third party. Yellow means there's been no verification, but neither has the site been reported on a blacklist. Red means someone has reported a site as disreputable and that you shouldn't trust it.

Run a web site and want to be trusted? GeoTrust, the company behind TrustWatch, will conveniently sell you a site identity seal for $49 per year. You can also get a trust rating from one of the other companies that it lists, including TRUSTe. I wish the page TrustWatch lists with these organizations made it exceptionally clear exactly which products each of these companies are selling are acceptable, especially what the lowest cost options are.

I can understand that site owners probably should pay to be rated. Someone's got to do the reviewing. But it shouldn't be super expensive. Plus, non-profits and governmental groups should get a break. Of course, I see the US White House site is considered trusted, and I'm betting they didn't pay for a review.

Want to know if something is trustworthy as you surf the web? There's a TrustWatch toolbar you can install that lights up to let you know if a site is trusted when you visit it.

That brings me over to news from earlier this month. Microsoft has a Phishing Filter Add-In for its MSN Search Toolbar. Like TrustWatch's, it's only for Internet Explorer, unfortunately. It will block sites that are on known phishing lists and warn you of sites that it suspect may be phishing based on scanning for common characteristics.

Having these features in toolbars is great, of course. In fact, I'm guessing we'll see Ask Jeeves down the line add TrustWatch-powered warnings to its toolbar since it's partnering to provide TrustWatch with search results. But it would be nice to see anti-phishing warnings in the results of the major search engines, as well.

I mean, the Ask Jeeves blog today is what alerted me and others to the new TrustWatch service. Rather than have Ask Jeeves point me elsewhere, I obviously want them to put these features into their own search results. Same, too, with MSN. Give phishing warnings in the search results, as well as in the toolbar. And let's see Google and Yahoo do the same.

Want to discuss? Visit our forum thread, Ask.com Powers TrustWatch - GeoTrust's Secure Engine.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:26 AM | Permalink

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