Another World: Netcraft Toolbar Pictorial Guide

One of my friend at Mozillazine pointed out that GralicWrap does not work for our beloved Firefox. S0 I decided to post here another Pictorial guide of an Anti Phishing utility which works for both IE and Firefox.

Homepage/ Download: http://toolbar.netcraft.com

System Requirement: It should work in any OS as long as that supports Firefox.

Purpose: Anti Phishing. It integrates itself to the browser as a Tool bar and displays the site information.

Step 1: Go to the home page url with your Firefox browser. You should see a page like the following image. Choose "Toolbar> Download the Netcraft Toolbar" option. You should see the next image then.

Step 2: In this page, click on the radio button labeled "Firefox 1.1 orLater".

Step 3: In this screen you will be cautioned by the site that Firefox may block the site's attempt to install the extension. Click "OK" to continue.

Step 4: At this step you should be informed by the Firefox that an extension installation attempt is stopped and you need to edit the settings to allow this site to install the extension. If you do not get this notification, continue to the Step 6, otherwise read on. Click on the "Edit Option" button as shown below to get the new window as shown in the next step.

Step 5: In the following window click on "Allow" and then "Close" to get back the same window as in step 2. Repeat Step 2 and Step 3, but this time you will not be cautioned that the attempt of installation is blocked. Instead you shall get a window as in the next step.

Step 6: This is the last window of Firefox seeking your agreement about installation of the extension. Hit on "Install Now" radio button to start the installation process.

Step 7: Once the installation is over "Restart Firefox" to make the newly installed extension operational.

Step 8: Now you have Netcraft tool bar alive and kicking in your favorite Firefox browser window.

Step 9: Netcraft tool bar does not require any configuration to make it operational. Though there are three main components that you should know about. the first one is the "Risk Rating". This will tell you about Netcraft assessment about the authenticity of the site. If it is pretty high you need to check the other components to validate that it is a genuine site. Green Bar indicates the site's safety, Red Bar tells you to think. Longer the Red Bar, more you should worry.

Step 10: This component will help you to verify the site. Click on the "Site Report", and a new browser window will open with all sorts of detail. You can verify whether the site is the real one from this page by verifying the owner of the site, hosting company and for how long this site is operational. Generally phishing sites do not float long enough on the net, at most few months those remain operational.

Step 11: This tells you the rating of the site in terms of visit rank. Obviously "Rank" of the phishing sites will not be high as legitimate ones. You can visit this rank by the region also.

Step 12: This is the last step of this tutorial. You can access many other features of Netcraft tool bar using the drop down arrow beside the colored "Netcraft" logo and beside the "Services" button of the tool bar. Users can also visit for more advanced resources of this tool bar at their homepage. Though for general users like me this much should be sufficient.