The latest version of the Opera Web browser incorporates a technology that warns users when they visit a fraudulent site.
Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox both included such a feature — called a phishing filter — in their new releases in October. (MSNBC.com is an Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)
Like the others, Opera Software ASA's free Opera 9.1 browser displays a warning when visitors go to a site that may trick them into revealing passwords and other sensitive information. Opera's update was released Monday.
For the lists of bad sites, Opera is tapping into the PhishTank project from OpenDNS. Users submit to PhishTank.com the messages they believe are scams, and others in the PhishTank community examine the message and the site to which it links and vote on whether it is or isn't a scam.
Opera has a sliver of the Web browsing market. According to WebSideStory, Internet Explorer leads with 88 percent of the U.S. share on computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Firefox is second at nearly 11 percent.
The Norwegian browser maker has made greater inroads on mobile phones.
