The battle of the internet browsers and the debate surrounding security online took a fresh turn today when America Online (AOL) released an updated version of Netscape, the product that battled for browser dominance in the 1990s with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE).

AOL hopes that Netscape 8.0, which has been released as a test version, will capitalise on widespread concerns over internet security.

According to MozillaZine, the online journal, the development of Netscape 8.0 was outsourced to the Canadian software company Mercurial Communications.

AOL dismantled most of its Netscape-related development sites in July 2003, just two months after Microsoft settled an anti-trust legal case with AOL's parent company, Time Warner, for $750 million (£390m).

There are serious fears about some browsers' vulnerability to online con-artists such as "phishers", who blast out hundreds of millions of bogus e-mails a day, with the aim of capturing private bank details.

"Businesses are paranoid about viruses, but there is an extremely low level of understanding of the specific security threat linked to browsers," Bob Jones, the managing director of Equiinet, the internet security firm, said.

"Netscape will need a far greater educational push if it is to stand any chance of clawing marketshare."

According to a Netscape source, the new browser, which is based on the increasingly popular Firefox, operates two lists of sites, a white list of trusted sites and a black list of potentially dangerous sites.

If the user visits a site on the white list, it will be rendered using the IE method of making pages appear. If the user visits a blacklisted site, the browser will display a warning page.

If the user chooses to disregard the warning, the site will appear using the Firefox method of rendering pages, but functions such as cookies, programs used by websites to track users, will be turned off for safety.

For sites that are not on either Netscape's white or black list, the browser renders the site in Firefox with cookies and Java functions, although the user can switch to IE with a single click.

"There is no chance of us rating every site on the web," the source said, adding that the lists will comprise the most commonly visited websites, which attract up to 80 per cent of total internet traffic.

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