NSS Labs, an independent security research group, found that Internet Explorer 8 was the best browser tested at thwarting phishing attempts. Firefox was statistically tied with IE for first with Opera and Chrome bringing up the rear. Safari was the real loser of the group with only 2% of phishing attempts blocked and there was no difference between the Mac or Windows client.

The study used several thousands of malicious pages over the course of July and also timed how long it took for each browser to add the page to a black list. Internet Explorer took an average of just under five hours, with Firefox not far behind. Again Safari lagged behind taking over 54 hours to block a hazardous site.