Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / March 2008

PayPal: Steer clear of Safari
http://www.macworld.com/article/132285/2008/02/paypal.html

If you're using Apple's Safari browser, PayPal has some advice for you:
Drop it, at least 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
Michael Barrett, PayPal's chief information security officer.

"Apple, unfortunately, is lagging behind what they need to do, to
protect their customers," 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."

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, 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.

When it comes to fighting phishing, "Safari has got nothing in terms of
security support, only SSL (Secure Sockets Layer encryption), that's
it," he said. Apple representatives weren't immediately available to
comment on this story.

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 to users that the site is legitimate. Upcoming
versions of Firefox and Opera are expected to support the technology.

But EV certificates have their critics. Last year, researchers at
Microsoft and Stanford University published a study showing that,
without training, people were unlikely to notice the green address-bar
notification provided by EV certificates.

Still, Barrett says data compiled on PayPal's Web site show that the EV
certificates are having an effect. He says IE 7 users are more likely to
sign on to PayPal's Web site than users who don't have EV certificate
technology, presumably because they're confident that they're visiting a
legitimate site.

Over the past few months, IE 7 users have been less likely to drop out
and abandon the process of signing on to PayPal, he said. "It's a
several percentage-point drop in abandonment rates," he said. "That
number is... measurably lower for IE 7 users."

Opera, IE, and Firefox are "safer, precisely because we think they are
safer for the average consumer," he added. "I'd love to say that Safari
was a safer browser, but at this point it isn't."