Great, Now I Need Anti-Phishing Software Too?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the it-will-never-end dept

Remember the good old days when all you really needed for security was some anti-virus software? Not any more. You’ve got to make sure you have good, regularly updated anti-virus software, and then you obviously need some anti-spam software or you’ll never be able to find your real email. Plus, anyone without a personal firewall application is just asking for trouble. Oh, and don’t forget those anti-spyware/adware programs to make sure none of that stuff sneaks by (you might want two such programs, just to be safe). Well, it turns out that’s not all you need. Now that phishing scams are all the rage among criminal operations, some companies are working on anti-phishing tools. Right now, it looks like most of them are site specific – which sounds positively awful. You need your eBay anti-phishing toolbar (lights up green when on a real eBay site, lights up red when on a known fraudulent site), your ISPs own anti-phishing toolbar and probably one for your bank too (note that some of these use different color schemes to warn you what’s safe and what’s dangerous). Eventually, these may all start to merge in some manner, but you have to wonder how effective they’re going to be. It’s amazing how much software you need these days just to surf the internet safely.