Geez Louise… Yesterday, a client relayed a report that his website had suspicious activity and was tagged as being a phish suspect by MSIE7. Some reports I receive are usually fish tales in themselves, but this client’s a straight shooter and probably angry that his site was tagged. So lest I anger him further by brushing it off, I checked it out.
Since I’m a Firefox junkie, I opened my dusty copy of MSIE7 and turned on the phishing filter. Sure enough, when I went to the reported page, I was pinged with the suspicious phishing website warning.
Being Murphy’s Law, it was the revenue generating page of the whole site. Now, I’m a little panicky, ‘cuz the client’s probably calling his lawyer. So after nosing around a bit, I click on the link “Report whether or not this is a phishing website.” This leads to a submission form enabling cub reporters to say “Yes - indeed this is a phishing website. Set Homeland Security to Yellow.”; or for the vanquished tagee to whimper “I’m sorry Officer, was I speeding?”.
Instead of telling them how I really felt, I copped a plea and gave Microsoft Phish Central the what for’s, maybe’s and why’s. Not ever thinking I’d hear from them again, I set about finding out why that one page would be tagged. I found clues, but no real answers. Miraculously, I heard back from the collective and they’ve added the page to the “I’m OK-You’re OK” list.
But back to Geez Louise…not only was that a bunch of non-billable scurrying around, but I felt like the poor dude who gets secreted away in “Rendition”. Not torture in the congressional sense, but that page has been up and running for quite awhile. How many people visited the site, popped the phishing filter, and scurried away, never to be heard from (or transacted with) again? Thanks, Big Brother.
