Pixm Anti-Phishing

Verified Site

When analysis by Pixm Anti-Phishing reveals that a page is legit, it displays a green banner saying (a bit ungrammatically), "This page is verified by Pixm, its a safe page."

Browser Support

Pixm works with Chrome and Firefox, but not Internet Explorer. That's too bad, because IE's built-in phishing protection isn't as effective as that of the other two.

Thinking

When Pixm encounters a page that needs examination, it overlays the top right corner with an animated icon, indicating that it's performing its "computer vision" analysis.

Could Not Authenticate

For some pages, Pixm displays a yellow banner saying that it "could not identify the authenticity" of the page, and advising caution.

Blocked as Phishing

You can see by looking at the Address Bar that this page is not actually PayPal. Pixm agrees, displaying a red banner saying that the page is blocked and suppressing any links or other content on the page.

Pie Chart

Clicking the Pixm browser toolbar button displays a pie chart of phishing attacks broken down by domain. However, in testing the domains listed in the chart bore no relation to the domains that Pixm actually blocked.

Fraud Missed

Pixm missed 40 percent of verified phishing sites, sites that, in most cases, all three browsers detected and blocked.

Valid Site Suspected

Pixm displayed its yellow warning for a handful of legitimate but less popular sites, among them Etsy, the main Geocaching site, and the Science Fiction Book Club (seen here).

False Positive

This is the valid sign-on page for bookseller Abe Books, but Pixm declares it to be a fraud. This kind of false positive is very uncommon in phishing protection systems.

Another False Positive

You may not be familiar with Abe Books, but you've surely heard of Delta Airlines. Pixm blocked the login page for Delta, calling it a suspected phishing site.

Green Banner Missing

Pixm placed its green safe banner at the top of ever banking site we tried. However, despite PayPal being the biggest phishing target in our tests, it did not display that banner for the real, valid PayPal site.