Must confess I missed this when it first kicked in, but could it be the nail in the ‘anti-phishing toolbar’ coffin? EarthLink lands a win, according to ZDNet, after being sued by a bank incorrectly flagged as a phishing website:
EarthLink had warned its customers who installed a free “ScamBlocker” toolbar–and visited AssociatedBank.com–that the Web site was “potentially fraudulent” and said that they should “not continue to this potentially risky site.”
The warning was wrong. Associated Bank, headquartered in Green Bay, Wis., with more than 300 locations in the Midwest, operated a legitimate Web site.
EarthLink got off the hook because they bought their list of dodgy websites from a third party. But who? The articles I’ve read don’t mention who it was. And how could the third party have judged a bank to be a phishing website?
I’ve not been a fan of most of these toolbars because I don’t think they do a good job of warning the user of dodgy websites. as my tests a few months back indicated. But to be honest it didn’t occur to me that these toolbars would create false positives. Bizarre.