Friday, 29 September 2006

IE 7 Tops MS Sponsored Anti-Phising Effectiveness Study

Microsoft’s IE 7 anti-phishing technology tops the charts in a study sponsored by the company itself. The study, 'Comparing the Effectiveness of Antiphishing Technologies', was conducted by 3Sharp. It tested eight browser-based products to evaluate their overall accuracy in catching 100 live confirmed phishing web sites over a six week period (May – July 2006) and also understand the false-positive error rate on 500 good sites. In addition to IE7, the toolbar and browser solutions tested included the offerings from EarthLink, eBay, GeoTrust, Google Safe Browsing using Firefox, McAfee SiteAdvisor, Netcraft, and Netscape. You can see actual version numbers in the detailed report.

Microsoft's Phishing Filter (MPF) in IE 7 Beta 3 received the highest 'composite score' at 172, followed closely by NetCraft's toolbar with a composite score of 168. The one that came at the fag end of the 'anti-phising ladder' was McAfee's SiteAdvisor, which recorded a composite score of '3.' Shane Keats, of SiteAdvisor said, "It's silly and wrong. We don't claim, anywhere, to offer phishing protection. In fact, we're pretty explicit that we don't."

So how accurate or biased the study really is, is something for you to think about.