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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>, openpermaculture <permaculture@openpermaculture.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] off-topic : SSL certification / phishing filter
  • Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:51:15 -0500

This is off-topic and I would be happy to continue the conversation off-list. There seems to be a good number of geekish permies on the list so, I'd appreciate your guidance.

A new Microsoft product called Phishing filter, apparently built into new versions of Internet Explorer, has been reporting that our website is a potential Phishing site. This is alarming to me as we don't want to be scaring people away from us. (We seriously NEED every sale we can generate just to stay at the high end of the poverty scale where, we've learned, like most of you I suspect, to feel relatively comfortable. We just bought a house and life has gotten a bit more expensive.)

I went to https://phishingfilter.microsoft.com/faq.aspx where I found the following:

Q. <javascript:toggleQuestion('title15', 'question15', 'answer15')> If I am a Web site owner, what can I do to help minimize the chance of my Web site being flagged by Phishing Filter? <javascript:toggleQuestion('title15', 'question15', 'answer15')>
A. There are several things you can do that can help minimize the chance of your site being flagged as suspicious. Think of these as best practices or optimal Web site design ethics.

* Use secure sockets layer (SSL) certification with a current server
certificate issued by a trusted certification authority if you ask
users for personal information.
* Make sure that your Web page doesn't expose any cross-site
scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Protect your site by using
anti-cross-site scripting attack tools
* Use the fully-qualified domain name. All domains should reverse to
actual domain names, not numeric IP addresses. This means a URL
should look like "microsoft.com" and not "207.46.19.30."
* Avoid using the @ symbol before the fully-qualified domain name in
your URL. The @ symbol enables phishers to concoct deceptive URLs
and is therefore immediately suspicious to Phishing Filter.
* Don't encode or tunnel your URLs unnecessarily. If you don't know
what this means, you probably aren't doing it.
* If you post external or third-party hosted content, make sure that
the content is secure and from a known and trusted source.


I don't know what most of this means. How do I get SSL certification? (I'll Google this, too, for more info.) Is this something you all have on your websites? Is this Microsoft-based extortion?

I recently added Google web search and Adsense to the site as well as some Clickbank links (trying to generate a little extra income). Would this increase the risk of being identified as a potential threat?

Thanks,
Keith

--
Keith Johnson
"Be fruitful and mulch apply."
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 5516, Bloomington, IN 47408
(812) 335-0383
http://www.permacultureactivist.net
also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
also Association for Regenerative Culture
also APPLE-Bloomington (Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy) It's a small world after oil.
http://www.relocalize.net/groups/applebloomington
also Bloomington Permaculture Guild




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