HOWZAT

The black list is intended to be a "completely dynamic list, which will be updated several times every day. This is a fast-moving area, with phishing and other fraud sites being set up all the time, so if the black list was not updated even for a day or so, it would quickly become out-dated and worthless".

There must remain, however, a fear that sophisticated gangs of online criminals will manage to fool the guardians that categorise sites.

"If there was a clever bit of technology in there that recognised danger then that really would be something," said Deri Jones, the chief executive of SciVisum, the online security consultants.

"But, as yet, there is no such thing and a list can never be up to date. There are millions of websites out there."

Netscape 8.0 also aims to turn the battle presently underway in the browser market to its advantage.

Nine out of ten surfers presently use IE to navigate the net. However, the Microsoft browsers popularity has dipped in recent months, with its market share slipping to around 90 per cent from around 96 per cent, according to industry figures.

The main beneficiary has been Firefox, the "opensource" browser designed and distributed for free by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation - itself a legacy of the team that developed the original Netscape browser.

Firefox has become more popular largely because it is regarded as safer than Internet Explorer. Since Microsoft products lead the marketplace, online criminals have targeted them above others. However, some critics have pointed out that some sites - designed with IE in mind - do not appear correctly using Firefox.

Turning this to its potential advantage, Netscape 8.0 uses the IE method of making pages appear - unless there is a question mark over security in which case the Firefox method is used.

However, SciVisum estimates that less than 5 per cent of websites are built to be IE-friendly at the expense of being compatible with other browsers, calling into question the logic of the Netscape strategy.

In other aspects, the browser follows Firefox's lead. For example, through a tab system, several internet pages can be opened in one window, using desktop space more efficiently than IE.

Netscape 8.0 will be released into a fiercely competitive marketplace. Microsoft won its dominant place in the market by supplying IE for free with its Windows operating package, demonstrating how developers have been happy to give away software in return for command of the portal via which consumers access the web.

Microsoft last month announced plans to launch an improved version of IE, designed to counter the explosion of online security threats.

A series of high profile attacks, such as the MyDoom virus which was estimated to have cost business more than $250 million (£130m) a year ago, has bolstered the market for security software.

The next version of IE will incorporate more stringent security features. A test version of the browser - version 7.0 - will be available this summer and it will be incorporated in the next version of Windows, which has the code name Longhorn and is expected to reach the market next year.

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