Comments on: Could McAfee (and Firefox) kill spam?

By: Topics about Pirate-bay » Archive » Could McAfee (and Firefox) kill spam?

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:25:30 +0000

[...] The Web Hosting Show placed an observative post today on Could McAfee (and Firefox) kill spam?Here’s a quick excerptToday 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 m [...]

By: Peter Tennant

Peter Tennant — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:19:39 +0000

Thanks Tim, my girlfriend has also been getting emails regarding non-payment for a ‘Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer’, thanks to you I can reassure her that it was just a phishing attempt (she was worried someone had already got hold of her details).

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:12:02 +0000

Could something not be done at the ISP end, I know people like my granny (or even my sister) aren’t going to update browsers, they just click cancel if an ‘unknown’ message appears even if it clearly says ‘Critical Updates’.
If theses sites were filtered at an ISP level, the end user wouldn’t never need to worry about it surely.

By: Tim Danton

Tim Danton — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:40:40 +0000

Not at all – and I agree about most modern browsers, which is why I slipped in a sentence about upgrading to the latest web browser in the penultimate paragraph.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:33:54 +0000

No problem. Apologies if the post sounded a little odd!

Also, don’t want to cause more work, but IE8 (and I suspect most “modern” browsers) will do virtually the same thing and report the page as dangerous.

By: Tim Danton

Tim Danton — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:17:32 +0000

Mike, you’re absolutely right. I’ve just disabled SiteAdvisor to double-check this and I still got the warning message (I mistakenly believed it was SiteAdvisor integrating with Firefox that caused it to be flagged).

I’ll edit the blog to reflect this!

Just to clarify, SiteAdvisor kicks in automatically – you get auto-forwarded to the SiteAdvisor page a fraction of a second after seeing the Firefox, which is another reason why I thought it was all tied together…

Thanks for correcting my mistake so speedily!

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:05:44 +0000

Slightly odd post because the screen shot you’ve posted is a FIrefox screen and not from McAfee…. Maybe Firefox will kill spam?