Looking at some screenshots, I notice that the Enable phishing filter checkbox is not a child of the Enable WebRep checkbox. If the phishing filter were conditional upon WebRep being enabled, it should be a child checkbox that is deactivated when the Enable WebRep checkbox is unchecked. So it would be logical to believe the phishing filter is separate from and not conditional upon WebRep being enabled. It would also be logical to believe that no browser plugin named "WebRep" need be installed in order to have phishing filter functionality.
In Avast 6, WebRep is separate from the malicious URL blocking (a category which I would expect to include phishing). I don't use WebRep, I don't have any avast browser plug-ins installed, but avast has occasionally blocked a URL. Keeping malicious URL blocking separate from plug-in makes sense for reasons including the fact that avast doesn't have, and will never have, plug-ins for all the different web browsers proper let alone other software programs that have HTTP, etc functionality. A logical place for it is in a shield/proxy rather than a browser plug-in.
Given such things, I'm surprised and confused by some of the comments here. It kind of sounds as though avast 7 might:
1) Use a significantly different approach to blocking malicious URLs: the functionality being moved from shield/proxy to browser plug-in
2) Utilize a plug-in named "WebRep" to accomplish WebRep functionality, and also utilize a plug-in named "WebRep" to perform the malicious URL blocking.
Could someone elaborate a bit more on this?