Browser developers including Mozilla, Microsoft and Opera are seeking to create a standard method of providing surfers with more information about the trustworthiness of a website. 

Several developers met in Toronto last week to discuss ways to collaborate, although the talks are still at an early stage.

The initiative aims to use the information provided in digital security certificates to help users identify phishing websites, which try to fool individuals into giving up sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers.

"We are trying to get a common set of guidelines for the so-called high insurance certificates that are common for e-commerce sites," Frank Hecker, director of policy for the Mozilla Foundation, told vnunet.com.

"Provided we get those common guidelines, we then want to look at different user interfaces to distinguish Amazon.com from my personal blog, for example, so that users can tell that Amazon.com is a different kind of site."

Individual browser developers have already done some work to help users catch phishing websites. Microsoft's forthcoming Internet Explorer 7, for instance, will colour the location bar red when a user visits a known phishing site.

"We want to take the experience in the address bar a step further to help create a positive experience for rigorously identified [secure] sites," said Rob Franco, lead programme manager for Internet Explorer security, on Microsoft's IE Blog. 

The company proposes to make the bar turn green and display a padlock symbol, and to list the names of the institution on the digital certificate and the company that issued it.

Opera has incorporated a special anti-phishing bar in its current browser version that displays information about a website.