How does the Authenticator compare to Internet Explorer 7 built-in anti-phishing feature?
The anti-phishing feature is only available in IE7 whereas the Authenticator is available for IE5.5, IE6, IE7 and Firefox 1.5, 2.0. The Authenticator focuses on the participating websites in its “white list” whereas the IE7 anti-phishing feature is based on blacklist and heuristics. So, when a website is verified authentic by the Authenticator, the user can be 100% sure that the website is genuine. However, the IE7 relies on a huge blacklist database that tries to manage thousands of new phishing sites every month and its accuracy is limited. In addition, the heuristic detection is merely guesswork imagine if IE7 tells you that a particular website is 70% trustworthy should you trust the website? With the Authenticator, a website is either absolutely genuine or fake.
