It seems that the Microsoft’s Phishing Filter in Internet Explorer 7 is marking perfectly legitimate business websites as suspicious. Without any justification, a message appears warning potential customers that the site might  be a phishing website and that they should not provide any information.

This has happened to me and the result is that orders have stopped dead.  (Try http://www.ijovent.org.uk/IJV%20Shop.htm in IE7 with the phishing filter turned on to see what I mean).  My company takes great effort in ensuring the security of its customers and  processes all orders through PayPal to ensure that no financial information is obtained by us.

I consider that Microsoft's approach has put an enormous slur on my company and it is surely a gross abuse of its power.

If  any of your other readers run small businesses, I urge them to check that their shopping pages do not display this message in IE7.

I hope that, through PCW, you can stimulate some discussion on this  topic.

Martin Liddament

Posted by on February 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2)

So what the Vista Upgrade Advisor fails to mention is that the software for my BT Total Broadband will not load under Vista. The same went for my Epson printer. So no Internet and no printing.

You might suppose that this problem could be got around by using XP on another drive to look for compatible updates. Not so. Microsoft small print says that two different Windows systems cannot be run on the same PC. This policy seems to be enforced by setting the XP version to hang at an XP screen on boot up. Removal of the Vista drive makes no difference.

The only way ahead is a clean reinstall of XP. (I had to do this twice before the penny dropped.) The good news is that all my data is intact in the backup on the external hard drive and my XP drive is now rubbish free. Vista is being returned.

Stephen Younger

Posted by on February 6, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)