PayPal excludes Safari
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I’ve seen some very convincing PayPal phishing sites in recent years. I’ve also worried many times that friends and relatives less savvy in the ways of the phisher may inadvertently hand off a password or two and blame me – the one who talked them into a PayPal account to begin with – for the draining of their life savings.
Thankfully PayPal shares my concern for said friends and family members and has published a guide to “Safer Browsers.” Apple’s Safari web browser, however, was not included in the list of recommended browsers.
This is not all that surprising, at least to anyone who’s followed Safari security concerns. Despite having improved in certain areas, such as IDNspoofing, Safari still lacks some fundamental security features found in Internet Explorer (7+), Firefox and Opera. Features such as Extended Validation certificates are heavily promoted by PayPal, despite the warnings of critics who feel that many targets of phishing scams don’t notice the green background in the URL field until it’s too late — if at all. Plugins like Saft do their bit, adding a few security features too. But until Safari catches up with IE and Firefox in the area of security, it’s not likely that PayPal’s list is going to include the otherwise spectacular browser.
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February 29th, 2008 at 4:03 am
I think that phishing has become so much of a problem lately that I have been advising people to check the link property for the address in which the link goes to so they can tell if it is legit or not. I would like to see more done about it in order to protect people, especially since these people go after financial information.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:52 am
I never answer an email from paypal or ebay or other known phgishing targets at all. I go directly to the website itself and see if there is a way to do it from the site itself. If I am unable to do this, then they do not get any information from me that could be used for devious purposes. This alone would do a lot toward fighting phishing. I use Firefox on my PC, but the way I deal with possible phishers helps no matter what browesr you use. Common sense will always beat out most security features that we learn to rely on. Too many tools=false security=no vigilance.
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
I do not either answer from either of those places among many others. You can check to see if they are legit. I check my paypal account enough to know that I would not be getting emails of the sorts sent to me.
I agree common sense. Everyone using the net should know by now, as they have been talked about everywhere that just because you receive an email from a place that you cannot just assume it is from that company, bank or whichever place.
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:26 am
I have been getting these for awhile now, and its just second nature for me to spam those emails. anything that is account related, or even money related, I know its a joke.
Heck, I don’t think these phishers are getting anywhere, time to try a new tactic because its not doing them any good. On the fact that safari doesn’t meet basic requirements, I believe everyone realizes that saft does its part.
March 4th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I’m not getting as many PayPal phishing mails as I used to, and there ARE tell-tale signs of “phishing,” such as e-mails that don’t address you by name (a dead giveaway), but sometimes the phisher relies on the “shock” of getting an “account being suspended” e-mail that it’s very easy to forget such clues.
I now send all suspicious mails to spoof@paypal.com and let them deal with it.
March 16th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
It’s funny though that Safari was not listed as one of the safe browsers. I’ve always thought that they were a bit safer than IE. In my opinion, Firefox is probably the safest browser out there, but Safari, or I thought, ran a close second. Hopefully Safari will catch up on some updates soon.
March 17th, 2008 at 3:53 am
I can see how people who aren’t particularly tech savvy can fall prey to phishers and I think it’s responsible of Paypal to advise their users on such issues. As for myself, I use Firefox and feel sufficiently protected against such schemes as a result.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:11 am
Well I know it is a big problem now a days and people lost money if don’t care to look link in address bar. I always check link before link and also never do loging from live links. I always use Bookmark service to login so I can stay safe.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:57 am
I think safari needs to improve its security if they wan’t to catch up or compete with the other leading browsers. Security is very important especially on windows based systems. Safari needs to follow these standards or offer a better security feature for it to attract more users.
April 1st, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Ok this doesn’t sound too good, espcially as the only browser I can use is safari as I’m connecting via the iPod touch. I don’t really know that much about phishing so I hope I don’t get caught out. Has apple released any dates or plans on improving the security for safari? Well I hope they do something about it soon, I always thought IE was the most insecure browser.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Yeah I’m so worried about phishing sites. I honestly don’t use safari at all. I use firefox only and I will only go to paypal and to ebay and those types of sites if I type in the address myself. I don’t get onto them from emails that are sent to me.