Microsoft has announced that alterations related to the development of the anti-phishing features included in Internet Explorer 7, as the Redmond Company's browser has reached Release Candidate 1 stage, have rendered the phishing filter inoperable with older builds. Raghava Kashyapa, Program Manager for the Microsoft Phishing Filter technology in IE7 has posted an entry on the IEBlog informing of the phishing filter's update process.

Kashyapa advised IE users to install the latest release of the product in order to resolve issues concerning the functionality status of the phishing filter. "If you're running any of the affected old builds, you will notice a "phishing filter service is unavailable" icon on the bottom right corner of your browser window. As you might already know - it is important to use the latest versions of IE7 to get the benefits of all the changes we have made over the past year since the release of the first public beta," he explained.

Users of Internet Explorer 7 builds prior to Beta 2, including IE7 Beta1 and the IE7 Beta 2 Preview, as well as of versions of IE7 build 7.0.5296.0 are directly impacted by the improvements introduced to the anti-phishing technology and should consider updating their programs. "Recent builds, including all versions newer than IE7 Beta2 (build 7.0.5346.0 and upwards) will be unaffected. To get the most up to date improvements I would strongly encourage you to download and install the latest version of IE7," advised Kashyapa.