Paypal’s Chief Information Security Officer recommends everyone who has a Paypal account to avoid using Apple’s Safari browser. Apparently, Safari is still way behind in security features compared to Internet Explorer and Firefox.
The story from Infoworld reveals that Paypal is most vulnerable to phishing attacks when accessed via the Safari browser.
Safari doesn’t make PayPal’s list of recommended browsers because it doesn’t have two important anti-phishing security features, according to Michael Barrett, PayPal’s chief information security officer.
Our recommendation at this point, to our customers, is use Internet Explorer 7 or 8 when it comes out, or Firefox 2 or Firefox 3, or indeed Opera.
Safari has no built-in phishing filter to warn users when they are visiting suspicious Web sites, Barrett said. 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.
With over 276 million users, Paypal is often a target of phishing scams which also includes online banking websites and social networking sites.
The most likely victims of these Safari-related phishing activities would be regular Mac users running Apple’s built-in browser. And though most internet-savvy users can easily spot a phishing website, it does help to have some sort of warning mechanism from your browser if the site you’re visiting is fake or not.
Do you agree that people should drop Safari?
Loading ...
nahh, lets drop paypal.
Among the three browsers that PayPal recommends, Firefox has the best phishing filter. Some phishing scams/sites still get through undetected in IE or Opera.
I do my banking transaction online and some of them will not even show you the login form if you’re using safari.
We should drop Steve Jobs:D
I use paypal with safari and I don’t have a problem with it. I guess that’s because I can spot a phising site easily.
I don’t think it’s fair to drop safari just because it lacks security features. In the first place, how many paypal users actually are using the security features of these browsers?
I bet a majority of internet/paypal users don’t even know what the padlock icon and https mean when it shows up on their browser.
That is why they need more security, because as lyle said, they are not aware of the padlock and the https…
A perfectly valid precautionary measure. Anyone defending Safari would be in denial.
@Lyle: Any software with security flaws is worth dropping. Mac users dropped Windows for a reason right? Or is Mac just a fad?
Maybe just for now until Safari is updated with more security features.
I don’t think PayPal would be a big enough influence to really drop Safari usage. We all know how fanatic Mac heads are.
no need to drop mac, use parallels