PayPal: Apple’s Safari Sucks
PayPal said you should drop Apple’s Safari browser if you want to avoid online fraud.Safari doesn’t make PayPal’s list of recommended browsers because it doesn’t have two important anti-phishing security features, according to PayPal.
Apparently, Apple is lagging behind what they need to do to protect their customers. PayPal recommends at this point to use Internet Explorer 7 or 8 when it comes out, or Firefox 2 or Firefox 3, or indeed Opera. Basically, anything but Safari.
Safari is the default browser on Apple’s Macintosh computers and the iPhone, but it is also available for the PC. Both Firefox and Opera run on the Mac.
Unlike its competitors, Safari has no built-in phishing filter to warn users when they are visiting suspicious Web sites. Another problem is Safari’s lack of support for another anti-phishing technology, called Extended Validation (EV) certificates. This is a secure Web browsing technology that turns the address bar green when the browser is visiting a legitimate Web site.
When it comes to fighting phishing Safari has got nothing in terms of security support, only SSL (Secure Sockets Layer encryption) - that’s it! An emerging technology, EV certificates are already supported in Internet Explorer 7, and they’ve been used on PayPal’s Web site for more than a year now. When IE 7 visits PayPal, the browser’s address bar turns green - a sign that the site is legitimate. Upcoming versions of Firefox and Opera are expected to support the technology.
