Here are a couple more tools designed to thwart phishers: EarthLink, a U.S. Internet provider, has today added something called ScamBlocker to its Toolbar, and made it available to all users, not just subscribers. ScamBlocker will “alert you before you enter a Web page that’s on our list of fraudulent sites”. SpoofGuard, from a team… Read More »
Just as phishing is getting noticed as a big problem, so a raft of solutions is appearing on the horizon. Here’s another: PassMarks. Here’s how it works. When a customer logs on to his banking website, a personalized image known only to the customer and the bank appears. If the customer doesn’t see the passmark… Read More »
Plaxo, the besieged contact updating service, is pointing readers of its blog to an article that takes issue with the company’s critics. The article, written by Jim Harper of PolicyCounsel.com, takes issue with privacy concerns, especially those aired by Australian academic Roger Clarke which I’ve tried to summarise in an earlier post. Jim’s language is quite… Read More »
In response to my post yesterday, a reader suggested that with the proliferation of pop-up ad blockers in browsers and toolbars, who needs to worry anymore about ‘contextual’ ad services like WhenU? Since I installed the Google toolbar, I’ve forgotten what a pop-up looks like. Since I installed Win XP SP2, the “pop-ups blocked” counter on… Read More »
This week’s Loose Wire column is about Bluetooth security: Next time you’re carrying your whiz-bang Bluetooth phone watch out: Serious flaws mean your contact numbers and other info stored in the phone could be stolen without you even knowing it. This latest threat is called Bluesnarfing. Full text at the Far Eastern Economic Review… Read More »