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Small Businesses Worry About MS Anti-Phishing
prostoalex writes "Ever get that warm feeling of safety, when the anti-phishing toolbar on Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 turns green, telling you it's safe to shop on the site you're visiting? Well, you probably don't, but the millions of Internet users who will soon be running IE7 probably will be paying attention to the anti-phishing warnings. WSJ.com is reporting on how Microsoft is making it tough for small businesses to assure they're treated properly by the anti-phishing algorithm." From the article: "[S]ole proprietorships, general partnerships and individuals won't be eligible for the new, stricter security certificates that Microsoft requires to display the color. There are about 20.6 million sole proprietorships and general partnerships in the U.S... though it isn't clear how many are engaged in e-commerce... 'Are people going to trust the green more than white? Yes, they will,' says Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner Inc. and an expert on online payments and fraud. 'All the business is going to go to the greens, it's kind of obvious.'"
'Are people going to trust the green more than white? Yes, they will,' says Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner Inc. and an expert on online payments and fraud.
WTF? Shouldn't that read:
'Are people going to notice the green or than white? No, they wont,' says WMF, an analyst at slashdot Inc. and an expert on stupid punditry.
On a slightly different note, I think the submitter has gotten the new expensive secure certs gold-rush/scam confused with the anti-phishing tech. Not surprising 'cause the article melds them together in a rather confusing manner.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Microsoft may think they've solved a problem and maybe they have, but this could be creating a bigger problem, though as usual it'll be no skin off of Microsoft's nose.
Microsoft's stance (FTA):
It may not be formal logic (all farmers wear overalls, therefor if I wear overalls.... (hint: I am not a farmer)), but most internet users are going to make the simple logical leap and assume that not "green" implies not legitimate.
It's easy for Microsoft to skate... they don't live the existence of normal business - it's a shame they have so much input into what others' business rules look like. This probably isn't fair. There has to be a legitimate way to become legitimate.
I hope a user smart enough to notice and use the phishing feature of IE, would be smart enough to use Firefox instead
Countdown to the phisher finding a way to subvert the system and obtain legitimate certs to green-light their scam sites :
4... 3... 2... 1...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This isn't even a problem of "paying up".... the small one-person companies don't even qualify to get certified for the green status... no amount of money will anoint them. This is where is starts to be unfair.
From TFA, this is the reasoning behind the stocking saleswoman's problems. Now, I tend to disagree that it's difficult to find criteria for validating a Proprietorship, since I've formed one myself. While getting the trade certificate and license to collect tax are easy, obtaining a valid small business bank account is not. I'm thinking that those 3 taken as a whole should be enough information to determine whether the Proprietorship in question exists and is doing legitimate business, at least here in Canada.
I don't think Microsoft screwed up here, incredibly enough. They've released a new product based on standards (of all things!). It doesn't erroneously display this woman's site in yellow or red, and it will correctly display it in green when the forum which determined the new certificate standard makes it available to Proprietorships. The article accuses Microsoft of tilting the online commerce playing field heavily toward big business again, but this isn't really Microsoft's fault. I agree that the new certificate standard should have included everyone from the get-go, but you can't fault Microsoft for building this useful feature on the latest standard.
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Users will quickly learn to ignore the status bar color just like they've learned to ignore all other security warnings (thanks to expired certificates and other false negatives we throw in their face every day).
Green means good is pretty standard. Don't go berating the users for making that jump.
Don't confuse ignorance with stupidity. There is a world of difference.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm a small businses owner, and guess what, I would have ZERO problems with this "green bar" policy.
Reason? I made damn sure that I'm incorporated as either a limited liability company (L.L.C) (www.3dprints4less.com - not up yet) or a S-corporation (www.seattleprototypes.com).
In this day and age of litigation, there is NO reason why if you're going into businses you should even consider sole proprietarship or general partnership agreement. IANAL, but go pick up any of the Nolo self-help books (recomemnded by lawyer friends) and they make it clear: The LLC and corp status is a bit more paperwork to upkeep, but offers MUCH better protection for the business owners. As a sole proprietarship, you are personally liable - down to your last nickel in your bank account, if your business incurs any liabilities. As a general partnership, you would be personally held liable for not only your business's liabilities, but the action of your partners well (if your partner racks up a debt, skips town, and the creditor have easy access to you - guess who's in the hot seat).
Not to mention, there's huge benifits you can get tax wise, from being a corporation or LLC. Corporate tax rates are a heck of a lot lower for one!
So, Aunt Joy making custom stockings, please, go pick up a self help book and get your business setup properly. This way some slimebag ambulance chaser can't sue you out of the house you're growing old in when some irresponsible parent let their kid chew off a bit of the stocking and the kid chokes on it.
-=- Terence
Actually there's two issues -- site verification and anti-phishing -- which are getting mashed together because they act on a similar concept (how much can I trust this site?) and display through the color in the address bar.
White is the default state, and says nothing about the site.
Red is when the site matches a blacklist of known phishing sites. (If you have the antiphishing turned on, it will check with MS each time you load a new page.)
Green is when the site uses one of these new SSL certificates which provides additional data and (supposedly) has a tougher approval process in which the certificate authority does an actual background check on the company instead of just making sure they have a working phone number. One hopes a blacklist hit will trump this.
A secure site that uses a standard SSL cert and is not a known phisher will have a white location bar.
But is Microsoft the right one to enforce this? Even if sole proprietorship or general partnership might be inadvisable, it isn't illegal, and Microsoft or anyone else who is not the government has absolutely no jurisdiction and no mandate to make it so.
Something seems definitely out of bounds here...
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Don't bother implementing any kind of "anti-phishing" crap and let the buyer be responsible for his own damn self for a change!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
> The solution for small business will be to market through a strong co-op or
> an established corporate partner like Amazon or eBay. The benefits are obvious
Yes. Control. Amazon and Ebay can suck off most of the profits and prevent the small businesses from growing into competitors.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
RTFA.
You don't get a "green" cert. You get an EV-SSL, or, Extended Verification SSL. It's not like MS invented something horrible to extort money out of people. FYI, Firefox and Opera implements anti-phishing toolbars as well.
http://www.digicert.com/ev-ssl-certification.htm
And, guess what? cost of the EV-SSL, along with payments to banks, credit card processors, etc... are just a part of the cost of doing business.
-=- Terence
The only people this can significantly hurt are business which were doomed to fail in anycase, and scammers.
But doesn't TFA say that many of the people that will be doomed to fail are legitimate businesses like Aunt Joy Christmas stockings? Though Microsoft will claim they're not. She won't be green. She'll lose business. It's small businesses that will hurt.
We have a Web site where we process orders for other companies. The pages are customized to our customers' look and feel and the credit cards are process against their accounts but all of the transactions take place on our server and use our certificate.
We have no problem getting the new certificates but what company name should appear in the bar? If we put our own name in, we will consfuse the end users who have never heard of us. If we want to use our customers company name, then they each have to get their own certificate and we have to assign separate IP addresses to each of our customers - at the moement we only need one IP.
What a nuisance.
Bullshit. Why should I be forced to spend more money when a Sole Proprietorship is JUST AS LEGITIMATE as a Corporation. Matter of fact, a lot of people tend to think that a sole prop. is *more* legitimate, from years of dicking from most major corporations.
The irony of all this, is that the only companies allowed to be deemed "trustworthy" are the corporate entities whose employees are shielded from personal liability.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
If you can't get a certificate as a sole proprietorship, INCORPORATE! Problem solved. [...] And this day in this sue-happy age, there's plenty of other reasons incorporation is a good idea.
Sole proprietor here. As someone who has spent a lot of time and energy looking at sole proprietorship vs llc vs s-corp incorporation, let me just mention that (contrary to popular belief) incorporation isn't some magic bullet that completely shields business owners/officers from liability - just ask Ken Lay. Incorporation does help shield business owners from the incompetence/misconduct of other employees. Of course this doesn't matter in one-person companies where (by definition) all the business decisions are made by the business owners.
Incorporation does, in theory, separate business assets from personal assets. However, in our "sue-happy" environment, there is a very easy way to get around this separation: simply sue the business *and* the owner.
There are scenarios when it makes sense to incorporate: lower tax rates (only worth it for six-figure revenues by my calcs), if you have employees, if you have multiple locations, if you're trying to establish a Chinese wall for separate-but-related business, etc.
Incorporating in my case (1-person business) would mean hiring a lawyer and accountant to file the annual state forms, draw up the stock agreement, and file the taxes in return for a few hundred dollars in tax savings and pretty much no liability protection. I found it was much cheaper to buy gen liability and E&O insurance (needed anyway for certain gov't contracts I have), and remain a sole proprietor. I imagine that this is true for hundreds (if not thousands) of other businesses across the US.
I live in China. I was trying to think of some evidence you could actually see short of catching a plane. And while a box of loose screws would obviously be made to whatever spec the customer wanted, internal screws for consumer appliances, which is what I meant, not loose screws, would be whatever was available to the factory and cheapest -- having been involved with export, cost is everything. Why would they increase costs by using a different kind of screw that has no inherent benefits? Historically, China's heavy inudstry was based on Russain technology, which in turn was copied mostly from Europe. More recently, Japanese, based on US standards, though fortuantely mostly metricated.
I still fail to understand why anyone would imagine LH screws would be standard in China.
PS. Chinese vaginas aren't sloped sideways either.
I have a small business, legally registered, which is a sole proprietorship. Even though my business is legal and even though I'm personally legally responsible for the business I cannot get this green bar.
I can pay the money for it (even though this starts to smell like a scam itself; pay the money for the certificate or you'll be blacklisted) and would if I could, but simply because they haven't defined rules to verify my type of business (which would be easy; My business is registered, has a clean tax-record and I can provide any identification they'd need).
So now MY business will not get on the whitelist because THEY fail to even set the rules by which I could get on the whitelist.
I seriously think MS should hold out on displaying the bars until sufficient rules are in place that allow all legal businesses equal recognition as such.
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