Free Phishing Protection with Delphish

Many Internet users do not realize how dangerous Phishing can be. They receive a email which claims to be from their bank and they blindly trust everything that is written in that mail and will click on any links that are displayed in that mail to “update” their security software or passwords. They are usually redirected to sites that password fish their passwords and use them to make online transactions. I’m always astonished by the amount of users that want to do online banking for instance on the Internet but lack basic security knowledge.

Installing a software that protects the computer against most forms of phishing would be one way to deal with the lack of knowledge. Delphish is a free anti-phishing extension for Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. It adds a new toolbar to the email client with several new options. The most important button in that toolbar is the Check for Phishing button which analyzes the mail in two steps. The first step is a comparison to an online database that contains known phishing emails. If that check is positive the result will be shown and the mail will be moved into the phishing folder.

If the first comparison is negative Delphish will analyze the contents of the mail to determine factors that are normally used in phishing emails. A whitepaper that is available on the Delphish website details that process but should be left for the interested that have a technological and mathematical background. Some of the factors that play a role in determine if the mail is a phishing email are: Geolocation, link analysis, context analysis and reputation analysis.

Even with the extension installed common sense should be used as well. You can use Delphish as a first layer of defense against phishing but should make sure that you are able to analyze the mails by yourself as well.