Fight Phishing at the PhishTank

An Internet start-up called OpenDNS launched a community anti-phishing site called PhishTank earlier this week. Registered users can submit a URL of a suspected phishing site and weigh in on the veracity of other submissions. According to OpenDNS, the idea is that the more sites you correctly weigh in on, the more street cred you get, and the more your vote counts the next time around. (A phishing site is one that tries to trick you into submitting sensitive information, such as a credit card number. It usually shows up as a URL link in e-mail spam.)

Don't have time to verify potential phishing sites for the benefit of others? I don't blame you. But it's worth checking out PhishTank, if for no other reason, than to safely see the volume and sophistication of today's phishing sites. For example, I just clicked on the submission link to a PayPal phishing site. I am taken to a screenshot of the site. I can also look at the site within a frame within the PhishTank, or I can open the phishing site in a new window. I strongly warn against going to a live phishing site, however. It's dangerous.

OpenDNS is a service that lets you surf the Web through its purportedly faster and safer DNS servers. (I say "purportedly" because I haven't tested it yet.) OpenDNS blocks known phishing sites, so if you're surfing through OpenDNS and accidentally point yourself to a known phishing site, the company will block you from getting there. How does it know about the phishing sites? It uses the information it gets through the PhishTank as well as a few services such as CastleCops.

To try out OpenDNS, simply type its server addresses in your router's settings page or PC's Network Connections control panel. OpenDNS provides more information on how to set that up.