Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Internet Explorer 7.0 & Heuristics

Or - What has Microsoft done for me lately?

In case some of you using Windows XP haven't noticed, one of the Automatic Windows updates that you may have downloaded automatically or by just trusting Microsoft by clicking download - was that you automatically downloaded IE 7.0. What does this mean? Well for most people, it means more security! YAY!! One of the most important features of IE 7 for home users is that the new browser includes Heuristics. The definition of Heuristics is: A problem-solving technique (in the computer world - an algorithm) in which the most appropriate solution is selected using rules. Interfaces using heuristics may perform different actions on different data given the same command. All systems using heuristics are classified as intelligent.

What does this do for you? Simply put - Microsoft has enabled your Internet Explorer browser to actually notify you if you stumble upon a phishing scam or website. It reports the site as "Suspicious". The site has not been reported, at least not yet conclusively, as a phishing site, but IE7 has examined the site programmatically and determined that it has characteristics of a phishing site. I think that is pretty cool to the casual home user.

I've looked back in my years of blogs and see that I don't have any information on phishing scams. Wierd, I thought for sure I blogged about that. I will bore you with that in another post.

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