An Analysis of Phishing Blacklists: Google Safe Browsing, OpenPhish, and PhishTank

Abstract

Blacklists play a vital role in protecting internet users against phishing attacks. The effectiveness of blacklists depends on their size, scope, update speed and frequency, and accuracy - among other characteristics. In this paper we present a measurement study that analyses 3 key phishing blacklists: Google Safe Browsing (GSB), OpenPhish (OP), and PhishTank (PT). We investigate the uptake, dropout, typical lifetimes, and overlap of URLs in these blacklists.