Microsoft has licensed Netcraft’s Phishing Site Feed for use in its Microsoft Phishing Filter Service, providing users of Internet Explorer 7 protection against the latest phishing attacks reported by the Netcraft Toolbar Community.

Microsoft’s inclusion of Netcraft data in the Microsoft Phishing Filter was announced by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates during his keynote speech today at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, which introduced new security intiatives by Microsoft.

The Netcraft Toolbar Community is a giant neighborhood watch scheme for the Internet, empowering the most alert and security-aware members to defend the rest of the community against phishing frauds, which to date has blocked over 650,000 distinct phishing urls aimed at customers of over 900 institutions. In independent reviews by ZDNet, CNet and academic researchers, the free Netcraft Antiphishing Toolbar has been found to be more effective than antiphishing tools in IE7, Firefox 2 and other toolbars.