Via Stéphane Degor, I found an interesting article in a French publication, Journal du Net, about PhishTank. Four people were asked to comment on PhishTank for “Avis de managers: PhishTank.” (That’s “Opinion of the Managers: PhishTank.”)

The preface, my translation:

A community project in the fight against phishing, PhishTank relies on the reactions and the contribution of Net surfers. Free and effective. However, will it survive in the long term? The opinion of four managers.

The group:

• Stephan Roux, of Sophos (security company)
• Christophe Canonne, of Cyber Networks (security company)
• Guillaume Brossard, of HoaxBuster.com (site for debunking scams)
• Laurent Dupuy, of Freesecurity (security consultancy)

My French is rusty, so I combined my lingering language skills with one of the free online translation tools to get a sense of what each person in the group says. I hesitate to give my own interpretations of what they’ve written, given the language uncertainty. Still, I welcome their comments and attention. And I encourage you to take a look.

Overall, they share kudos and concerns. The former are appreciated, and the latter are something all of us have to consider and address. We are making PhishTank better… and by “we” I mean moderators, developers, administrators, and the active members of the community.

There is no simple declaration of victory, of course. We build tools for the community to efficiently express its judgment through PhishTank. We make sure the data is freely available to the larger Internet community needs. And we keep improving. That’s how PhishTank thrives in the short and long term.

I would encourage these managers (especially at the security companies) to use the data and consider how they can contribute to the community, too.