Do you trust Microsoft phishing filter?

I don’t. Not after what Team Emanila experienced just a couple of hours ago.

After moving around the design elements of our emanila Food Section, suddenly a warning popped up (using an IE browser of course) on our screen to tell us that the Food section “might be a phishing website.”

A phishing website?

I think Microsoft should really start re-examining its own position in what “phishing” is about. From what we know:

“In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger), auction sites (eBay), online banks (Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase), online payment processors (PayPal), or IT Administrators (Yahoo, ISPs, corporate) are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting.

“Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one.”

Source: Wikipedia.org

So, how could we “masquerade” to be emanila’s Food Section when in fact we are emanila’s Food section and we are using the same URL?

Yup, I admit there are positives in this warning (like emanila being acknowledged by Microsoft technology as being trustworthy), still I find this incident annoying, unfair and a time-waster. We had to fill up Microsoft’s online form to justify why the re-designed Food section is not a phishing website. We needed to tell MS to rectify their system otherwise, the same warning would pop-up on the screen of our members and users.

Here is a screenshot of MS phishing warning:

And we are still waiting for advice from the Microsoft Phishing Filter group.

Have you had a similar experience? Why not share them with us.