14 DAY TRIAL // The developers of the top four browsers used worldwide sat down and started making plans about what changes need to be made in order to have a safer online environment.
The subjects discussed by developers of the Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Konqueror focused on the measures necessary to reduce the high frequency of phishing attacks. This sort of planning has been taking place for the past eight months, but actual results and agreements were established only during a meeting in Toronto on November 17.
Among the changes are plans to create a new way of informing Web surfers that they are visiting a trusted Web site and major changes to the look of pop-up windows, so that they get less confusing.
The obvious change will be in the way that some high-profile web pages are displayed. Developers wish to make the browser's address bar turn green when browsers access popular web sites similar to the way the Firefox address bar goes yellow and displays a padlock when visiting a secure Web site. The green address bar will be quite the opposite of the red address bar that Internet Explorer 7's Phishing Filter will display on known and suspected phishing sites.
To make these changes happen, developers will have to introduce new and more rigorous digital certificates, which are a sort of electronic identification cards used by Web sites to prove that they are, in fact, who they claim to be.