• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 29, 2005

With consumers increasingly concerned with preserving online privacy, Microsoft last week stepped up its public efforts to convince consumers that the Internet is safe.

The company last week said its new browser will have a feature that can warn people about known identity-stealing "phishing" sites. Adware company WhenU last year started a similar program that involves serving consumers pop-ups that warn them when they have landed on a known phishing site.

Last week, it also came to light that Microsoft was instrumental in helping federal authorities make an arrest in a phishing scheme. Federal authorities last week arrested an Iowa man, Jayson Harris, for allegedly stealing credit card numbers in a phishing scam that had targeted MSN users.

Harris allegedly sent e-mails addressed "Dear MSN Customer" that contained links to a phony Microsoft page. The scam began to unravel after an e-mail ended up in the in-box of the mother-in-law of a Microsoft employee, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Microsoft's own lawyers got involved, and were able to subpoena information leading to Harris' arrest, according to the Times.

Publicity about Internet security issues--including not only phishing, but also spyware and other online problems--appears to have contributed to consumers curtailing their online behavior. A July report of the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 81 percent of online consumers have stopped opening some e-mail attachments due to fears relating to adware and spyware. And in April, Pew reported that 35 percent of users said they had received unsolicited e-mail seeking financial information.

Phishing activity itself seems to have declined in July, but remains at double the rate it was last October, according to a report issued last week by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a coalition including banks, Internet service providers, technology vendors, and others.

The group stated that it received 14,135 reports of instances of phishing last month--down from 15,050 in June. Still, the number was more than twice as high as in October 2004, when the group received just 6,957 reports.