Firefox better at fighting off Phishing than IE?

In the world of investment, phishing is probably the worst and most common scam around. Phishing can fool individuals into thinking that they are into legitimate websites, stealing sensitive information. The threat of phishing has been around for a while now and both firefox and Internet explorer has taken steps to combat phishing. But which one is better? Firefox 2 or IE 7

The SmartWare test, tested the integrated anti phishing warning features of firefox 2 and that of Internet Explorer 2

Yahoo News reported :

Both IE7 and Firefox have built-in antiphishing features designed to alert you when you’ve hit a fraudulent site. With Microsoft’s browser, antiphishing is turned on by default. Each Web site you visit is checked against a database maintained by Microsoft, and known frauds are blocked.

Firefox has two antiphishing options. With the first, the sites you visit are checked against a local database on your computer. With the second, the sites you visit are checked against a live database maintained by Google.

In the SmartWare test, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 blocked 690 known phishing sites, or 66.35 percent of the total. In contrast, Firefox blocked 78.85 percent when using a local antiphishing database and 81.54 percent when using the online database.

Here's more detailed article on the test:

Firefox 2 Phishing Protection Effectiveness Testing

and here's a link to a Phishing IQ test :)

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Security practices on the user end.

No matter how secure an electronic payment system ( e-gold, e-bullion, Liberty Reserve..etc ) might be or how tough and elaborate the security features of HYIP programs are, carelessness and the lack of knowledge in the user end can put everything in danger.

Here's a list of things a user should not to do.

• Clicking on links sent by unknown people. Reason : You may be directed to a phishing site, or harmful cookies can compromise your privacy in many ways.
• Filling out information fields in unknown websites. If you somehow end up in a website you do not know about, or you do not really trust, do not fill out information fields.
• Do not open email messages from strangers, never download the attachments from these emails. Some of the attachments might contain Trojan and other viruses which has the ability to steal your account information.
• Do not click yes to remember password option in your computer, specially in the shared PCs
• Do not share your usernames and passwords with others. ( for obvious reasons)

And Here's a list of things you should do

• Change your passwords frequently. That will make it harder to break in.
• Always check the address field of the browser before filling out information fields, because it is easy to make a scam website look like authentic website by mimicking the HTML code. You can get tricked into updating account information, thus giving it away to the scammers.
• Make sure that your computer has a firewall and Antivirus softwares installed. It is often not a good idea to put more than one antivirus or firewall in your system, it will decrease the effectiveness rather than increasing it, and will make your PC very slow.

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