9.10 fraud protection compared with other browsers
Tuesday, 19. December 2006, 08:54:30
Asa's blog postings didn't get much comments recently (not that many people interested in space exploration, and it will be some months before FF3 gets interesting), so he posted about Opera 9.10. Even though he wasn't offensive, he's still accused of baiting Opera fans 
On the substance: it will indeed be interesting to see if independent studies will detect differences in protection level between the new browsers, because the three browsers have very different implementations!
IE 7: asks you to enable anti-phishing on first start, uses (IIANM) both heuristics and a whitelist in the browser, and callbacks to servers in Redmont. The latter could be problematic, not everyone trusts Microsoft with their browsing history...
FF 2: doesn't ask, but enables blacklisting with regularly (every hour) downloaded blacklists. Might give OK results if the quality of their blacklists is good, but the timing is important. You can enable real-time fraudchecks using a Google service, but that requires clicking 'OK' on a dialog that tells you Google will store your browsing history... The testing they did themselves show a slight increase in effectiveness after enabling this.
Opera 9.1: doesn't ask, but gives an easy way to check the status of individual sites (if you are curious enough to click the '?' in the address field, you'll find this option). You can enable real-time checking from this dialog (and from the Preferences), where Opera doesn't asks you click 'OK' on a big warning dialog, because there is nothing to want about. Opera doesn't store your browsing information or cookies or IP addresses etc. The only thing the Opera sitecheck server remembers will be what sites the collective Opera users have asked for in the past few days. There is the full documentation available.
Recent research has shown that many phishing scams operate only for a few dozen hours, presumably making most of their victims in the first hours. So it makes sense to use real-time checking against regularly updated servers. None of the tested services get a perfect score, though there are certainly differences. Opera hopes that combining the GeoTrust and PhishTank databases will give at least as good results for our users.
I encourage everyone to register an account on PhishTank, and spend a few minutes every week in verifying suspected phish sites. And I also encourage everyone to install Opera 9.10 for their less websavvy friends and relatives, and enable fraud protection for them!
On the substance: it will indeed be interesting to see if independent studies will detect differences in protection level between the new browsers, because the three browsers have very different implementations!
IE 7: asks you to enable anti-phishing on first start, uses (IIANM) both heuristics and a whitelist in the browser, and callbacks to servers in Redmont. The latter could be problematic, not everyone trusts Microsoft with their browsing history...
FF 2: doesn't ask, but enables blacklisting with regularly (every hour) downloaded blacklists. Might give OK results if the quality of their blacklists is good, but the timing is important. You can enable real-time fraudchecks using a Google service, but that requires clicking 'OK' on a dialog that tells you Google will store your browsing history... The testing they did themselves show a slight increase in effectiveness after enabling this.
Opera 9.1: doesn't ask, but gives an easy way to check the status of individual sites (if you are curious enough to click the '?' in the address field, you'll find this option). You can enable real-time checking from this dialog (and from the Preferences), where Opera doesn't asks you click 'OK' on a big warning dialog, because there is nothing to want about. Opera doesn't store your browsing information or cookies or IP addresses etc. The only thing the Opera sitecheck server remembers will be what sites the collective Opera users have asked for in the past few days. There is the full documentation available.
Recent research has shown that many phishing scams operate only for a few dozen hours, presumably making most of their victims in the first hours. So it makes sense to use real-time checking against regularly updated servers. None of the tested services get a perfect score, though there are certainly differences. Opera hopes that combining the GeoTrust and PhishTank databases will give at least as good results for our users.
I encourage everyone to register an account on PhishTank, and spend a few minutes every week in verifying suspected phish sites. And I also encourage everyone to install Opera 9.10 for their less websavvy friends and relatives, and enable fraud protection for them!
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By babox, # 19. December 2006, 15:48:12
Heh. I've said before that Asa could post, "Opera's logo is red. Firefox's is blue and orange." and get accused of bashing Opera.
You mentioned being able to check sites on-demand in Opera 9. That's something that, as far as I can tell, is missing from Firefox. IE will show an icon in the status bar if you have antiphishing disabled and haven't previously checked the current site, allowing you to make an on-demand check. So I guess it comes down to four modes:
By Kelson, # 19. December 2006, 20:35:29
Remove the icon from the address field, by changing the EnableTrustButton setting on opera:config.
By Rijk, # 19. December 2006, 21:00:45
By babox, # 19. December 2006, 21:13:01