Filed under: Business, Security, Web services, Apple
PayPal recently issued a warning regarding the Safari web browser. And it’s fairly dire: don’t use it unless you want to be a victim of online fraud.
Now that’s coming out swinging.
PayPal has left Safari out of its list of suggested browsers because it lacks two anti-phishing security features:
- Safari has no built-in phishing filter to warn users of suspicious sites
- Safari has no support for EV (Extended Validation) certificates, a secure web browsing technology that gives a visual cue in the browser when it visits a legitimate web site.
Until Safari updates its technology to incorporate these solutions, PayPal will advocate using IE7 and Opera, which are the only browsers that currently support EV certificates (the upcoming Firefox 3, along with its current beta, also add support for EV certificates).
So is the Safari browser really less secure because of these missing features? In our mind, it seems that phishing filters and EV certificates are secure only insofar as people are cognizant of the technology. Some studies show (download PDF) that EV certificates aren’t effective unless someone is specifically trained to notice the green address-bar notification. And how many times do you think some unwitting personal user has clicked through a warning of a possible phishing attempt?
In the tech support world, there’s a funny phrase where the support problem is described as a problem “between the chair and the personal.” The question is, is the phishing technology in place in IE7 (and others) effective enough to keep us from doing something stupid?
You make the call.
[via Yahoo! News]
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