According to studies commissioned by the Mozilla Foundation, its own Firefox browser is more efficient in blocking out phishing attacks than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Both Mozilla and Microsoft have released new versions of their browser software - Firefox 2.0 and IE7 correspondingly - and both vendors were eager to emphasise new anti-phishing features that had been included.
The Mozilla Foundation embarked to determine just how efficient the Phishing Protection feature in Firefox 2.0 was. At the same time it also checked the Phishing Filter within IE7. "We started a program to examine the efficacy of this feature in an open, clear and impartial way... to better appreciate how well Phishing Protection achieves in flagging possible phishing attacks in general and relative to Microsoft's phishing filter in Internet Explorer 7," Mozilla said in its report.
The two browsers' presentation was observed when set the task of recognizing known phishing websites. Software corporation SmartWare was the independent third party that carried out the testing.Firefox came out as the champion of the testing, blocking 82 per cent of the sites. Internet Explorer only succeded to block 66 per cent of the phishing websites.
iSec Partners was requested to confirm the reliability of the findings. "The methodology completed by Mozilla follows a fair testing process for functionality/feature testing... iSEC has determined that methodology used for the testing process can be considered a fair and unbiased approach," it said.
