Here’s what Rick Brown said of his Inspector Brown anti-phishing toolbar in response to my questions about its failure to catch the cross scripting phish mentioned here:
Our software works to protect our community of users and allow each user the ability to fight back against spam, phishers and online fraud.
Yes, its true, not all smart people will care to report bad links or websites, but a percentage of users will gladly do so.
The idea is simple, when a member of our community gets an email from a known spammer or phisher, they report it, either by sending an email to reports@inspectorbrown.com or clicking on the “Report a Site” button from the Inspector Brown toolbar. Immediately, once the site is reported, our software goes to work analyzing the site for clues. How long has the site been active/registered online? Is it IP based, does it show certain patterns that make it stand out?
The toolbar was also designed as a marketing tool. Financial institutions and any large corporation wanting to protect and promote their image can benefit from a branded toolbar that shares a common database with other businesses. If certain smart employees or users report to our system every user using our software gets the same protection. The toolbar was designed to allow additions such as links to certain departments within a company, information tickers for stocks or weather, the options are endless.
Our software differs from spam blockers as they are what we call “band aid” approaches. Spam is still sent to the users and may end up in spam folders, however some emails such as your message to me, was sent inadvertently to my spam folder even though it was legitimate email. All this traffic affects the ISPs and corporations and users who rely so heavily on email.
What if you went to the grocery store and bought 100 dollars worth of food, brought it home only to find out that $70 of the food was bad? You would be pretty upset. However, ISPs constantly send all of us unwanted e-mail that makes up the majority of traffic sent via our Internet connections.
Our software intends to weed out the bad traffic. If users can’t access the websites of spammers and phishers, they can’t purchase their goods or fall victim to their crime. The criminals will have to resort to other methods. The more users who become part of our community increases the chance of a percentage of users who will be vigilantes and want to fight back, stopping the bad guys from invading our lives. The more users who join our community increases the speed at which the sits are reported. Each user is given a score to determine the trust level we have with each user. This prevents the bad guys from using our software to “punish” their competition.
There is no perfect method to stop spam and phishing scams, but our software adds one more layer of protection in a unique way.
Thanks, Rick.