MSN today unveiled two new MSN Search Toolbar Add-ins, enabling people to customize their toolbar to their specific interests and providing a smarter searching and browsing experience.

These latest add-ins for MSN Search Toolbar include a beta of the Microsoft Phishing Filter Add-in, which helps protect customers from potential risks of phishing Web sites and online identity theft, and the Games Add-in, providing one-click access to some of the Web's most popular online games via MSN Games.

The Microsoft Phishing Filter Add-in for MSN Search Toolbar - the first such technology to be integrated into a Web search toolbar - currently offered in a beta version, helps provide protection against "phishing" Web sites, a fast-growing class of online identity theft. Phishers create fraudulent Web sites that resemble those of legitimate businesses, financial institutions or government agencies to convince visitors to disclose sensitive personal and financial information that can then be used for criminal activity such as identity theft.

Microsoft Phishing Filter helps detect potential phishing Web sites and divert visitors away from them in three ways:

- It compares addresses of Web sites a consumer attempts to visit with a list of reported legitimate sites that is stored on the consumer's computer and updated periodically.

- It analyzes the sites that people seek to visit for characteristics common to phishing sites.

- It provides the option to automatically send Web site addresses that a consumer attempts to visit to an online service run by Microsoft Corp. that checks the address against a frequently updated list of reported phishing sites.

The new Games Add-in for the MSN Search Toolbar provides one-click access to MSN Games.
This tool delivers a pull-down menu of links to that day's most-played games, with the option for people to add their favorites, join the action and see how many other gamers are involved. The Games Add-in lets users play a daily trivia question directly from their toolbar, and players can guess the answer or get a hint from MSN Search.