IE 7 phishing shield patch released An update for a glitch that affects the phishing shield in Internet Explorer 7 has been released by Microsoft.
Improved security for users has been core to the development of the software giant's new products. With the huge increase in phishing attacks, one of the big 'selling' points for IE 7 has been the protection against these attacks the new browser is said to offer.
However, it has been found the feature that flags up fraudulent websites that try to con consumers out of their personal details can also slow down computers running Windows XP.
An article on Microsoft's support site highlights the issue and how the problem occurs under certain conditions, such as when the web page contains many frames.
The article said: "When you use Windows Internet Explorer 7 to visit a web page, the computer may respond very slowly as the Phishing Filter evaluates web page contents.
"Internet Explorer 7 evaluates the whole web page when you browse a frame. Therefore, CPU (central processing unit) usage may be very high."
The company has now developed the patch which can be downloaded from its website or tells people that they can resolve the problem by disabling the phishing shield.
The advice is to start IE 7, then go to the Tools menu and click Internet Options. The user then clicks the Advanced tab and then clicks on disable phishing filter in the Settings list. To ensure the changes are applied, the user clicks on Apply, then OK and restarts IE 7.
