Internet Explorer 8 SmartScreen Filter Reaches Important Milestone

Internet Explorer 8 SmartScreen Filter Reaches Important Milestone

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The SmartScreen team just informed me that we’ve reached an amazing milestone – Internet Explorer 8 has blocked 1 billion attempts to download malware!

Socially engineering attacks like malware are a growing threat on the internet and are one of the most common risks to people’s safety online. We introduced malware protection in Internet Explorer 8 as part of the SmartScreen Filter and have talked about it on the Windows Experience Blog a couple of times over the last year.

Here are a couple of quick facts about Internet Explorer and malware as we hit this 1 billion blocks milestone:

  • NSS Labs have recognized the Internet Explorer 8 SmartScreen Filter as a leader in protection against Socially Engineered Malware in their August 2009 and March 2010 reports which compared Internet Explorer 8 to Chrome, Firefox and others.
  • Our malware block rates continue to improve because we continue to improve the SmartScreen service back-end. For example, in August 2009 we had blocked about 70 million attempts to download malware or about 18 million blocks per month. At the time, according to Net Applications, about 15% of the internet population used Internet Explorer 8. In the last two months, we’ve blocked 100 million attempts to download malware. Last month, according to Net Applications, nearly 26% of the internet population uses Internet Explorer 8. There are 1.7 times more users on Internet Explorer 8 than August 2009 but we’re blocking 5 times more malware month on month.

1 billion malware blocks is an amazing milestone and an example of two things. First socially engineered attacks like malware continue to be a real threat for users on the web. Second, to help keep you safe online your browser needs to continually enhance and improve its service. We have got better and better at blocking malware through the SmartScreen Filter because we have continued to invest in our back end service since we released IE8 in March 2009. It’s this investment that has kept us at the top of the socially engineering malware charts according to NSS Labs and has helped our customers stay safe online.

If you haven’t already upgraded to Internet Explorer 8, now would be a great time to do so at www.microsoft.com/ie . If you’ve already upgraded, you can check that SmartScreen Filter is enabled by going to the Safety Menu and clicking on SmartScreen Filter. If the menu gives you the option to “Turn Off SmartScreen Filter”, the SmartScreen Filter is switched on.

 

James Pratt, Senior Product Manager

Internet Explorer Business and Marketing Team

11 Comments
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  • How do you find the Safety Menu in IE8?

  • @BenjaminS It should be in the command bar to the top right of IE8 between the Page and Tools menus.

  • joshua 1 Posts

    Is there a method to report an unsafe website to SmartScreen Filter without first opening that page in IE?

  • @joshua

    I'm looking into this for you.  Can you explain the circumstances under which you'd want to do this?

    Thanks

  • i am happy with IE8, it is safe and secure and i often guide users why/how to use its new features.............

    But i want to suggest one thing which should be improved.....

    When i try to open "my windows live home page" in IE8 which has lots of friends update, facebook updates and much more it takes time to open...i mean untill whole the page is loaded is don't allow me scroll and don't respond. however other tabs work well.

    Same happens on other blogs website as well but for the pages which got lots of comment and discssion.

    I don't know if it is due to some other reason but i just wanted to report it.

  • @joshua Unfortunately we don't have a way to report sites without visiting the page.

  • @Tarun Juneja Have you tried the page in the IE9 Platform Preview?  I'm curious if that's faster for you.

    Your problem might be be an add-on that's running slowly.  This whitepaper should help you figure out if that's a problem : www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx

  • when i tryy to report tttthhhhiss page it givess me a faakee smartscreen notification page.   It giveeees mm ee ttthesse opttiioons:: """Thisis  a ssaafffe webppaaee"""    or  "Iam  tthhe owwwnnerrr of tthss  wwebbppggge....."" anndd thn ttthhii  hhapeeennss   ttto  mmy kkeybarrrd. ttt slwwwwss   y  mmpppuutter dowwn. hheerre iss teeppagggeee:          velotraffic.co.cc

  • James, we have just had our website flagged as an unsafe website.  We submitted a report via the red screen that

    comes up stating how and why our site is not unsafe.  How long does it take for MS to review these submissions? We have some 2000 customers that are now trying to rent cars to customers at Hertz, Avis, etc and they cannot use our system.  This is really bad as customers are waiting in line. Please help.

    Ed Sanborn

    Director of IT

    TSD Rental

    (978) 210-9855

  • But to see its effect in the real world visit my website which it says is unsafe www.apm.ca and I actually challenge you to find any malware that it is hosting or links to.   I have scanned it with mcafee, norton, googles webmaster tools, etc and it always comes back clean, yet none of my customers are able to get to our website without seeing this warning.  For this to truly be a useful tool you need to provide more information than to simply say it is unsafe.   Even if there is a problem on my site which I highly doubt, you are giving me NO information to try and correct.  Very few false positives you say, somehow I doubt that.  

    It's actually quite laudable what you are trying to do but you really need to give the tools to innocent bystanders like me so we can get off your list when we don't belong on it and also even if we do actually belong on it you should tell us why so we can fix the problem.

  • j.p. 1 Posts

    I'm wondering if you could direct me to some blocked sites (red) and some suspicious sites (yellow). I need some screenshots for examples in the textbook I am writing...New Perspectives on Computer Concepts.