Everybody knows that there's more to watch out for on the Web than just phishing. Malware, in every imaginable shape and form, has exploded over the past few years. Viruses have been a problem for decades, and worms can in large part be blamed for the millions of spam messages people receive every day. But as the Web has evolved, so has its usefulness to crackers, and today malware on the Web is a major concern. Drive-by downloads using browser and plugin exploits are scary, and so is the creative social engineering that is used to make users download something innocent-looking, which in fact is malicious code that will harm your computer and/or steal your private information.

This is where malware protection comes in. While it is still important to maintain an up-to-date antivirus installed, Opera now offers an additional layer of protection, and will warn when you try to open a page that is known to contain malware, the same way it does when you try to access phishing sites.
Users already familiar with Haute Secure's popular anti-malware toolbar for other browsers already know how useful and important this is, and now, we have the same level of protection built directly into Opera, with a familiar interface.


Protection against malware will be enabled for everyone who has Fraud Protection enabled, and is live as of this post. If you would like to see it in action, grab the latest build and go to www.verybadsite.com to test it. We will soon be adding the ability for users to report new malware pages that are not yet detected, contributing to the "community watch" effect Haute Secure has been building since 2006.

Enjoy, and stay safe!