It should be obvious that identity thieves and scam artists are going to put in the time when it comes to the Christmas season, since the pickings are so much better. With that in mind, the people behind the Opera browser have jumped into the fight to protect users from phishing scams by offering integrated anti-phishing and anti-fraud tools, which has been a collaborated effort with GeoTrust and PhishTank.

As an increasing number of Internet users shop online, phishers — thieves who dupe users into performing transactions or sharing information with phony but legitimate-looking Web sites — are taking advantage of the higher volume of potential targets, according to Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. “Cybercriminals are very active during the holiday season,” he said.

With version 9.1, the latest iteration of its free Web browser, Opera joins competitors Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Mozilla by prominently featuring anti-phishing and anti-fraud measures.

In order to bring the new security functionality to its browser, Norway-based Opera partnered with digital certificate provider GeoTrust and PhishTank, the OpenDNS anti-phishing project.[more]

Tags: Computer Protection, Scams, Identity Theft, Defense in Depth