What is phishing, and how can the Safe Browsing feature protect me from it?

"Phishing" is a particularly popular scam where a party tricks a user into providing a username and password or other personal information necessary to commit identity theft. The most common requested information is a Social Security number, bank account number, PIN number, credit card number, or mother's maiden name.

In many cases, this party creates an official-looking web page that asks for this information. Users will often receive a link to this phishing page via an email which claims to come from an official-looking (but likely forged) address. Given the nature of the web, it's easy to stumble upon these fraudulent websites by following links that you find in your email, on the web, or in IM messages.

Google Safe Browsing is a feature of the Google Toolbar for Firefox that alerts you if a webpage you're visiting appears to be asking for your personal or financial information under false pretenses.

Utilizing Google technology with reports about misleading pages from a number of sources, Safe Browsing is often able to automatically warn you when you encounter a suspicious page.

If you're running Firefox 1.5 and would like to activate the Safe Browsing feature, please follow these steps:

1. Click on the "Options" button located on the Toolbar.
2. Under the "Browsing" tab, check the box next to "Safe Browsing."
3. Click on the "Safe Browsing Settings" button to configure your level of protection and click "OK" to apply the setting.

If you're running Firefox 2, Google Safe Browsing is incorporated into your Firefox Options menu. Please visit http://www.google.com/support/firefox/bin/answer.py?answer=54383 for instructions to enable it.

In order to detect whether a page is requesting your personal information, the Safe Browsing feature sends information about the site you're visiting to Google.