GeoTrust Inc. launched a search engine powered by Ask Jeeves Inc. that verifies whether Web sites listed in results are legitimate or are more likely to be those of phishers looking to steal personal information.
In phishing scams, victims usually receive e-mails purporting to be from legitimate companies, like eBay, that provide a link for them to update their account information. However, the link takes people to a fake Web site where any information they provide can be used to access their accounts.
The TrustWatch Toolbar provides real-time alerts, either red to signal that the Web site is unverified as being safe, yellow for caution, or green to indicate that it is verified and users should call the company first. People who want to shop online can use the TrustWatch Search Web site, powered by Ask Jeeves, and the results will show the same alerts.
The alerts also provide other information about Web sites, such as whether a site has been authenticated as trustworthy and have a Secure Sockets Layer certificate to safeguard data during transmissions. The system scans a Web site for fraud patterns and checks it against a blacklist of fraud sites. It also offers reviews and store ratings from shopping engine BizRate and information about how long the site has been online, how many other sites link to it, and a traffic ranking from the Alexa Web crawler.
The TrustWatch Search site and TrustWatch Toolbar, both provided free from Needham, Mass.-based GeoTrust, are designed to help protect people from unwittingly giving up their financial and other personal information to fake Web sites when shopping online or when targeted by phishing scams.
The Needham, Mass., security firm, which sells digital certificates and encryption technology to retailers, financial institutions, insurance companies and other businesses, also launched out of beta a browser toolbar for Internet Explorer that will verify the legitimacy of Web sites being visited. A Firefox version of the toolbar is expected soon.
Security is a major issue among consumers, who are the target of virus writers, spammers and phishers. The latter is the focus of TrustWatch, often use phony emails to lure people to sites posing as those from a bank or other legitimate business. The intent is to trick consumers into revealing IDs, passwords, credit-card numbers and other personal information.
Security threats have certainly made consumers a lot more nervous about doing business online. Fully 9 in 10 consumers say they made at least one change to avoid viruses or spyware, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. For example, nearly half of the 2,000 adults surveyed by Pew no longer visit Web sites that they fear might deliver unwanted spyware.
In launching the TrustWatch site and browser add-in, GeoTrust hopes more retailers will buy its digital certificates, so they can be shown as a trusted site in search results, Neal Creighton, chief executive for GeoTrust, said.
A lot of consumers buying something online want a level of comfort with the retailer they are going to do business with, Creighton said. In a way, we are competing with online-search leader Google for people who want to purchase goods online.
The company also shares revenue for text advertising listed on results from Ask Jeeves, which was recently acquired by e-commerce conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp.
Creighton believes consumers will migrate to search engines that can verify the legitimacy of a Web site. The next-generation of search has to change the playing field, Creighton said. This is the next-generation of search — trusted search.
Each site listed is first checked for whether it has a digital certificate either from GeoTrust or rival VeriSign Inc., whether the site’s operation and content shows a pattern similar to fraudulent sites and whether the site appears on blacklists maintained by security firms.
Similar browser-based anti-phishing toolbars have been launched or are in the works. For example, Internet services company Netcraft provides a free plug-in for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Firefox that provides a risk rating for Web sites and blocks those it assesses as phishing sites. Microsoft itself has introduced a tool to identify scam sites for MSN and has said it will build similar antiphishing features into its IE7 update.