eBay Account Guard to be discontinued; enhanced protection offered by IE7 and Firefox3

11 Permanent link to eBay Account Guard to be discontinued; enhanced protection offered by IE7 and Firefox3 eBay Account Guard to be discontinued; enhanced protection offered by IE7 and Firefox3

FEATURED POSTRichard Brewer-Hay / Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

eBay Account Guard to be discontinued; enhanced protection offered by IE7 and Firefox3

Hi Everyone,
As we continue in the online services industry to improve our tools and technology designed to create a safer online experience, eBay has been working with industry partners such as Internet Explorer and Firefox3 to identify phishing and other potentially risky sites. Although we originally developed filtering technology for the Account Guard feature of the eBay Toolbar, that same technology is now available in the very popular Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Firefox3 browsers.

While the Account Guard feature is still visible and will be until it is removed in mid-January 2009, we have made a business decision to deactivate this feature now in favor of IE7 and Firefox3. Quite frankly, those browsers do a much better job of alerting you when you’ve landed on a potential spoofed website. In order to minimize risk I strongly suggest that you download and immediately use the most recent versions of IE7 or Firefox 3. Of course, which browser you decide to use is a matter of personal preference; they are both excellent and provide strong protection. I personally prefer IE7 because I find the user interface easy to use and the anti-phishing alerts work very well; however, my teenage son really likes Firefox3 and it has some great features which a lot of younger users seem to like.

Here is a bit on what each site has to offer in the way of protection.

Internet Explorer 7 (IE7)
IE7 has a new tool to fight phishing: the Phishing Filter. IE7 will prompt you to turn on the filter automatically when you visit a site that is out of your normal browsing pattern. If you visit a known phishing site, IE7 displays a warning webpage and turns the Address bar red. If you visit a suspected phishing site, the Address bar turns yellow. You can read more about the Phishing Filter here: Internet Explorer 7 tools help you recognize phishing scams.

Firefox3
In Firefox3, it should already be the default setting in the security options, but you should check it by going to Tools > Options > Security and ensure that “suspected forgery” and “suspected attack site” options are checked.

These two browsers do an excellent job of alerting you to sites known to be used for phishing and to those that have a high risk potential for phishing. Whenever you receive such an alert, unless you are certain that the site is safe, I recommend not opening it. While the site might look legitimate, it could be downloading spyware or some other harmful program that is gathering your personal information.

As always, please continue to forward any suspicious sites or emails to spoof@ebay.com. You can also report them to the Anti-phishing Working Group at http://www.anti-phishing.org, or the Federal Trade Commission at http://www.ftc.gov.

Thanks,
Rich LaMagna
Online Safety Advisor, eBay Inc.
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Henrietta / December 9th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

I think I am confused. You are trying to tell us that the Mozilla security feature is eBays Account Guard?

Rich LaMagna / December 10th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

Henrietta,

Sorry for any confusion. No,we are not suggesting that either IE7 or Firefox3 have eBay’s Account Guard feature. IE7 and Firefox3 have their own anti-phishing technology that works well. We’ve decided that there is no need to duplicate what they already do so well–I strongly suggest that you use the latest version of one of those two browsers for maximum protection.

Thanks

Rich LaMagna

Carson / December 10th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

I think he’s saying that the phishing detection that was in eBay’s Account Guard how now been integrated into IE7 And FF3′s anti phishing filters.

Richard Brewer-Hay / December 10th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

@Henrietta

Rich uploaded his blog post yesterday and I had given it the headline. It was misleading in retrospect and I apologize for creating unnecessary confusion.

Now changed.

Cheers,
RBH

Chris @ TameBay / December 10th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

I don’t know how anyone can work with IE and eBay!

Firefox will allow you to hit the return button and step back through screens having remembered your previous selections (especially useful when doing relists when you’ve marked half a dozen items or processing orders in SMP).

Click the back button in IE and it’s already “forgotten” the selection you previously chose. Plus they’re always way behind, I mean come on, they’ve only just discovered tabbed browsing!

PAR / December 10th, 2008 at 7:24 pm

Firefox hands down. I like the way you can save a session when you’re powering your computer down. Next day its right there again. IE 7.0 is full of glitches and I’m sorry I ever upgraded to that one.

JJH / December 10th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

Ditto the Firefox comments, I have NEVER used IE, and I mean NEVER, since the dawn of the browser. IE is not a good browser, it’s adequate, but not good. “Clunky” is a good word for it. Unfortunately as you know “it comes with” your computer, It’s already there ready to go (yea, along with Outlook, another really fine choice). So, unless you’re a little savvy, you don’t know there are other choices out there. That was Microsoft’s strategy, and it continues to work to this day.

Firefox & Thunderbird for me.

Chris @ TameBay / December 11th, 2008 at 4:27 am

Talking of FireFox….. The eBay companion version (http://pages.ebay.co.uk/firefox/ highly recommended if you like an eBay sidebar) also contains the eBay Account Guard.

Will this version of FireFox be updated to remove it as well?

An additional benefit of account guard is that it warns you if you enter your eBay user name and password into any website that isn’t eBay.

Whilst Firefox itself warns of phishing sites it can’t know what your eBay user name and password is and I’m sure that feature has encouraged many users to have a unique eBay password which is never a bad idea. Shame to see that go.

(I’m presuming Rich, that even with your love of IE you haven’t forgotten that there is no “IE eBay edition” but that there is a “FireFox eBay edition” which is reason enough to love FireFox more ;-) )

Beth / December 11th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

Yeah? Now all you have to do is get the Turbolister people to bring TL into agreement with IE 7 and Vista so we can still list with it.

I certainly think you could have:
1. ASKED if we wanted Account guard discontinued
2. given us a heads up say 30 days out that you were discontinuing it. IMPERIAL EBAY… you don’t get any notice, you don’t need any notice. Just trust us, we know what you want and when you want it and you have no reason to doubt us…………………………………………………………………… SURE!

Rich LaMagna / December 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm

@Chris @ TAMEBAY,

Apologies for the delayed response. As you can imagine, this is a very busy time of year at eBay as we implement these and other changes.

In response to your questions, I have been able to confirm that both the spoof site warning functionality and the eBay password warnings will be removed from the Firefox3 companion version that contains Account Guard. I know that you have found these features to be quite helpful and can appreciate your concern.

I want to assure you that eBay is very focused on safety and I will be keeping you posted on policies that have impact in that area.

Best wishes for the holiday season!

Rich LaMagna
Online Safety Advisor

Stanley Shain / January 5th, 2009 at 10:09 pm

While my opinion will mean nothing to eBay, I think you folks are missing the HUGE difference between what IE7 and Firefox do regarding phishing sites and what Account Guard did.

IE7 and Firefox may very well do a good job in letting the user know that they are on some sort of phishing site. IF they recognize it as such.

Account Guard’s main value, at least as I see it, was that it didn’t so much as tell you that you were on a phishing site, it let you know you were on a VALID eBAY SITE.

While IE7 and Firefox have to keep up with the ever changing antics of phishers, which is totally out of their control, Account Guard had only to know that the site was really eBay’s; something that should be WITHIN eBay’s control.

IE7 & Firefox say: “Don’t stay here. We THINK it’s a bad place to be.”

Account Guard said: “Welcome. We KNOW you are safe here.”

THAT is a BIG difference. I am disappointed that Ebay, a big target of phishers, has decided that the effort in putting out the “Welcome” mat was too much for them and not worth the effort. I think their customers should be worth more to them than that.