When Google
hired lead Firefox developer Ben Goodger last year, speculation began running rampant that the company was poised to offer a Web browser of its own. In the year since the announcement, such a browser has not materialized, but Google's support of Firefox has brought some tangible improvements to the browser. One of these, Google Safe Browsing, will soon be
part of the Mozilla trunk and will provide anti-phishing services to Firefox.
Safe Browsing helps to prevent phishing scams through the use of both a blacklist of known bad sites and automated technologies that make their best guess about a site's intentions. Such a tool could be a big help to novice users, especially, as phishing attacks continue to grow in both numbers and in sophistication. The
Anti-Phishing Working Group estimates that 1700 phishing sites were active in December 2004. One year later, that number rose to more than 7000. While technically savvy users are unlikely to be taken in by an e-mail that directs them to
www.g00gle.com, many casual users of the 'Net are less discriminating.
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Ars Technica
Mar 6, 2006, 10:40 PM
