Today I received the most convincing phishing email yet to hit my inbox, to the extent that it inspired enough doubt in my mind that I clicked on one of the links (making sure my security software was up to date first, just in case!).

Why was I fooled? For one, it actually had my name in the email, and for another we as a magazine have been focusing on eBay for the last month or two as part of the investigative cover feature that adorns the current issue (eBay exposed). Could it be some sort of malicious attack from an eBay devotee, a paranoid part of my mind wondered?

So, with a deal of trepidation, I pressed the link – and was impressed to see how effective the combination of Mozilla Firefox and McAfee’s SiteAdvisor service is.

A huge red flash appeared in my browser window warning me that this site was considered to be a “web forgery”, and then I was auto-forwarded me to the SiteAdvisor page with the full description of its perils.

It’s a beautifully efficient system that just works, and if we’ve learnt anything from the McColo affair (where, after a big prosecution that took down US-based ISP McColo, spam fell by as much as 40% only to return to historic levels a matter of weeks later) it’s that cutting off the botnets doesn’t work – they’ll simply reappear.

You need to get rid of the commercial incentive of spam – and admittedly I’m talking “merely” about phishing-based spam here – which to my mind means integrating SiteAdvisor into every web browser out there. And updating to the latest web browser, not sticking with an old one out of habit or laziness.

In the meantime, if you haven’t, head over to the official SiteAdvisor site now for the free download.