Netscape 8 May Give Green Light to Spyware

[Tami]

Netscape 8 May Give Green Light to Spyware Sites
By Paul F. Roberts

A new version of the Netscape Web browser is being criticized by spyware experts for failing to notify Web surfers when they're visiting Web sites that distribute the noxious monitoring programs.

Netscape 8's Trust Rating System, which warns users about insecure Web sites, gives a "green light" to Web sites that download spyware onto users' machines, according to [url=\"http://www.benedelman.org/\"][u]Ben Edelman[/u][/url], a student at Harvard University Law School and an expert on spyware software.

In a conversation Wednesday, AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein acknowledged that some spyware sites received an "unknown" rating from the browser. The spokesman subsequently confirmed evidence viewed by eWEEK magazine suggesting that other spyware sites received a "trusted" rating. The company is working to correct the problem with the new browser.

The critiques are the latest bump in the road for Netscape 8, which was released this month. It was patched almost immediately to cover a host of known holes in its code, which is based on the popular Firefox browser, and to fix a conflict with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

America Online Inc. touted Netscape's advanced security features when it released the program May 19. The new browser was "designed for the millions of online users who are searching for a safer and better browser," a company news release said.

The Trust Ratings feature is a key part of the browser's security story. According to AOL, if a user visits a Web site using Netscape 8.0, the browser automatically checks to see whether the site is on a blacklist of suspected virus, scam or spyware sites, or on a "white list" of 150,000 Web sites deemed acceptable by digital certificate authority VeriSign Inc. and by TRUSTe, a nonprofit online privacy monitoring organization.

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