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February 28, 2008
PayPal: Avoid Safari
PayPal advises everybody to avoid Safari:
"'Apple, unfortunately, is lagging behind what they need to do, to protect their customers,' [PayPal CISO Michael] Barrett said in an interview. '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.'
"Unlike its competitors, 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 antiphishing 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."
The same green bar we're all, apparently, ignoring. From Dark Reading:
"'Across the globe, Windows Internet Explorer 7 has more than 100 million users seeing green,' VeriSign said in a press release about Extended Validation SSL technology earlier this month. About 5,000 sites are using the new technology, which gives users a 'green bar' in their browsers when they prepare to click on a legitimate link.
"There's just one problem, according to a report issued yesterday: About 70 percent of consumers either don't use the green bar or don't know what they're looking at.
"'Whilst approximately half of those surveyed said they would be prepared to spend up to [$1,000] online, 70 percent of shoppers don't understand the significance of the green browser bar, and 20 percent of those questioned do not understand what the golden security padlock represents,' said NetBenefit, a U.K. hosting service provider."
Posted by mhall at 4:43 PM | Add Comment
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