A security software startup is offering a free package it says can help users protect themselves from phishing attacks.
FraudEliminator's ad-free, free-of-charge browser toolbar is designed to find and block online fraud automatically, the startup said announcing the new toolbar. It also offers such functions as integrated search and user-configured popup protection, and also claims to identify the host countries of Web sites a user visits.
"Until now, users who were concerned about phishing have only been offered difficult-to-understand advice like 'stop clicking on links in emails' or 'inspect the address bar of every Web page you visit'," FraudEliminator’s Jeffrey Hellman said announcing the launch. "We developed FraudEliminator because we believe average Internet users need a simple-to-use, free-of-charge tool that finds and blocks fraud on their behalf. FraudEliminator is the first step toward making the web a worry-free place again."
Various analysts have suggested over 57 million people a year have been victimized by phishing – emails and Web pages mimicking familiar businesses and services to trick Netizens into giving up their personal financial information.
The company keeps a real-time threat database to track identifying information about all known online fraud threats, FraudEliminator said, updating it by way of a company-built network of fraud incident collection points, with users encouraged to report fraud incidents to the company's central fraud monitoring center.
FraudEliminator also has "a proprietary set of statistical algorithms designed to recognize signs of fraud," the company continued. "For example, a fraudulent Website claiming to be your bank or financial contact that is actually based in Moldova or another unusual location, or has other telltale signs of phishing sites, will be blocked as fraud. This happens as soon as you click on the Website, and that site is then added to the FraudEliminator database and other users are protected from viewing it as well. This is done in conjunction with FraudEliminator staff going out and identifying dangerous fraud sites."
The company is also careful to point out that they do not now and plan never to use spyware, adware, or popup ads in any way, shape, or form.
"Users can optionally provide us with their name and email addresses which we will only use to inform them of new features and products," according to an announcement on the company's own Website. "Our software does not collect any information beyond minimal information it needs for security purposes. We will never share any user's personal information with third parties without the user's explicit consent. For more on this, see our Privacy Policy. FraudEliminator is a security company; our goal is to protect your privacy, not violate it."
The toolbar is built for a Windows PC running Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, or XP, and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher, FraudEliminator said.
FraudEliminator Director of marketing Alex Randall told AVNOnline.com they're working on making versions of the toolbar for other browsers, but right now Internet Explorer is still where the majority of the Net population can be found.
"Other browsers are making inroads, but upward of 90 percent still use IE," Randall said. "In the coming weeks we're going to bring this out for AOL, and we're also working on a Mac version as well as a Mozilla/Firefox version." He didn't suggest how soon those versions would be available.
"Right now, the data on who falls for phishing is not very transparent," he continued. "There's an estimation for how many people have fallen for these things. It's hard to contact every one of them and do a very good statistical analysis. But most of these people are not the people who'd be downloading Mozilla or Firefox. Most of them are on Internet Explorer right now."
