IE 8 SmartScreen Filter for Safer Browsing
SmartScreen filter is a great feature that blocks browsing to web sites that are known to be malicious such as, hosting malware or phishing sites. To enable this feature click Safety from IE 8 and from the drop-down menu, click SmartScreen Filter and then Turn On SmartScreen Filter…
The other two options are Check This Website and Report Unsafe Website, quite self explanatory! Please, note that it is unethical to dislike a web site and report it as unsafe! However, reported web sites are checked by Microsoft before they are added to a blacklist!
When checking a web site, a dialog box is displayed to inform you that the web site address will be sent to Microsoft for verification, however, no private data will be collected during the process.
In a nutshell, SmartScreen filter analyses web pages for suspicious trends and if it detects such characteristics, it displays a message to warn you. Every site you visit is checked against a blacklist and if a match is found, it displays a warning message. In addition, a downloaded file is checked against known malware and if a match is found the download is blocked.
