347849 - Warning user when they visit badware/malware sites

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 380932

(Toolkit :: Safe Browsing, enhancement)

Description

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Prompted from http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=449050

Currently firefox supports anti-phishing. That is to say, people are warned if they visit a site that is likely to try and scam them (of money, of their personal data, etc.)

What about another similar feature, maybe called 'Safer-browsing' which warns users if they are visiting a site which is likely to contain malware/badware. Google seem to be providing such a feature for their search results:
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5251742.stm
If firefox could use such a list, it would protect its users even more.

Of course there are some points to consider:

1) If firefox did use such a list, what would happen if a user clicked on a malware site from a google search. Would google, then firefox, warn them of this? Two warnings are unnecessary

2) How long is the list of sites that contain badware. I would expect it to be longer than the anti-phishing list, but maybe not.

3) Would google (or other providers) be willing to give this information out for this purpose?

4) Should the user have to discriminate between anti-phishing, and safer-browsing. That is to say, should there be a new set of options for "Safer browsing" (anti-badware), or should the anti-badware list just be merged into the anti-phishing list, and controlled from one set of options. Or to put it another way, would an end-user want to be protected from phishing but not from badware, and vica versa?

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

A kind of built-in SiteAdvisor?
There could also be included a simple extra search plugin to Scandoo.
Or people could set their keyword.URL to that address.

Comment 2

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

for 4) I would imagine it would be a pref and the user chooses what kind of safe browsing alerts he/she would like to see, and then it would just be rolled into a "safer-browsing" feature.

as for 1) it should be simple enough to turn off the alerts when clicking through google

Comment 3

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

See also Bug 329541. The extension works well (although it throws an irritating error in the Error Console hundreds of times), looks nice, only the problem is that it really scans each and every URL that you visit. Weeks go by that I don't search for free screensavers or Ipods so maybe a scan of a possible dubious site is needed 5 times per year. In that case I copy the URL and paste it in the box on http://www.siteadvisor.com/ for a quick answer.

Comment 4

[Andreas Kobara]

It would be great to have something like a Wizard to set up higly secure sites, for example for online banking.

In a wizard dialog, you could enter the URL of your bank, and the wizard checks the banks certificate and explains the user the important values.

Further it could safe this information and autocheck it for later visits and mark it visualy when you're on your verified banking site.

Also, possibility close all other browser windows and disable all unneeded
plugins to make online banking more safe, and easier for the average user. 

Comment 5

[Tony Chang (Google)]

Consolidating with bugs that already have momentum (either 380932 (UI) or 387196 (backend)).