Sites like Web of Trust allow users to share information about phishing sites, but scores of similar tools exist and as it would be counter-productive for each to maintain their own database of phishing sites.

PhishTank centralises phishing reports and allows developers to use their data free-of-charge in their own applications, with manual or automatic download enabled (although the latter requires a free API key).

PhishTank offers a service a lot of web users will use without even realising it. Whilst certain tools might submit their data to PhishTank too, you can help your fellow web users and fight phishers through submitting data directly to PhishTank.

With a free registered account, reports can be submitted through a web interface or through email. It is extremely easy to send the next phishing attempt that manages to get through your spam filters to PhishTank. Providing you have that email address registered with them, all you have to do it forward it to phish (at) phishtank.com .

Whilst it might not directly benefit you to do so, you are helping users who might help you too. If nothing else, you are keeping your credit card interest rate down marginally, as your bank has to pay less out to compensate phishing victims!

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Multiple services are available in the other website information categories as well. The best part is that these information can be easily accessed. Options are to display a toolbar in Firefox that displays some of the information right away and offers one-click access to everything else. Not everyone wants to use a toolbar on the other hand. That’s why there is also the possibility to right-click on a link to display the information in a overlay window. An overall rating is displayed on top of each category that is computed from the results of all single results.

The add-on does not slow down the web browsing experience noticeably.

Overview of the services offered by Link Extend:

• Safety – Web of Trust, McAfee SiteAdvisor, Web Security Guard, Browser Defender, Norton Safe Web, DrWeb, Compete, Google Safe Browsing
• KidSafe – Web of Trust, Alexa, Browser Defender, Web Security Guard, Google SafeSearch, ICRA
• Ethics – Scryve, Knowmore, CorporateCritic
• Site Traffic – Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, Statbrain
• Thumbnails – GooglePreview, MyThumbnail, Websnapr, Thumbshot

Link Extend comes with extensive settings that can be configured in the add-on’s options. This includes removing services that are not needed, configuring how and where thumbnails are displayed, setting up context menu entries, configuring search engine options that include hiding unsafe options, toolbar options and if suspicious or unsafe websites should be added to the Firefox browsing history.

Link Extend is compatible with several search engines including Google Search or Yahoo Search. It might take some time to configure the Firefox add-on properly but the process should be worth it for many users who like to be on the safe side when surfing the Internet.

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WOT, which stands for Web Of Trust, is an add-on for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that increases the Internet security of the web browser. The main purpose of the add-on is to scan and rank all links in popular search engines and other websites to give the user an indication of the dangers of each listed website.

Each link on supported websites will be ranked with a single colored icon which can be expanded into a detailed view when hovering with the mouse over it. Websites are ranked from very poor to excellent in the four categories trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety.

The Internet Explorer add-on will display a popup if the user clicks on a link with a poor rating which works as a second warning. It is then up to the user to ignore the warning and visit the website, skip the website or check some user reviews on the Web of Trust website first.

Web of Trust should not obviously be the only means of Internet Security but it can be helpful especially for inexperienced users who might get into troubles when visiting unsafe websites. The Internet Explorer add-on is actually not exclusive to Internet Explorer as a version for Firefox is also available for download.

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Users rate websites on their ‘Trustworthiness’, ‘Vendor reliability’, ‘Privacy’ and ‘Child Safety’. Information about websites is also gathered from Compete, comments by users and through links from reliable sources (such as Digg, Lifehacker, Open Directory Project and Wikipedia).

Web of Trust sits alongside your navigation buttons, ensuring it has your attention, and should a website be cause for concern the button will change colour. Information is also integrated in webmail and search results, to ensure you won’t stumble across an unsafe website.

It currently has information regarding of about 21,000,000 websites based on feedback from the extension’s users. It can also be used as parental control, blocking children from websites not suitable for kids.

The website has flaws. It relies on a user spotting a phishing site before someone falls prey to it and naturally, intelligent scammers could trick it through rating their own site. Then again, I imagine this would rarely happen and even when it does, one would expect it to be quickly rectified.

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