Safari Browser Lacks Anti-phishing Technology, Warns PayPal

PayPal, an online payment site, has warned its members against using Safari while making transactions as it does not have proper safeguards against phishing. In phishing, users are coaxed to click links pointing to fake Web pages where they are asked for personal information used to meet fraudsters' malicious purposes, as reported by macnn on February 28 2008.

PayPal noticed that phishers typically target its users where the phishing page asks them to provide their private login details. Once that information is gathered, fraudsters get free control over a hijacked PayPal account.

The payment site further said that Safari also doesn't recognize EV certificates, a new standard, which allows users to get a visual hint about the legitimacy of a Website. The basic problem with Safari is its lack of technology against phishing, which has been pushing the US senators to legislate more anti-phishing laws than are already present.

Michaek Barret, Chief Information Security Officer, PayPal, said that data on PayPal's site indicates that results are beginning to follow from the EV certificates technology. According to him, users of IE7 have more chances of signing onto the PayPal site than users without the EV certificate system, presumably because they know that they are on a valid site.

According to PayPal, anti-phishing filters warn surfers when they are accessing a suspicious site. These filters change the color of the address bar to green if a user is on a site that the technology recognizes to be legitimate. By the same process, for fraudulent sites, the address bar turns red and for suspicious sites it turns into yellow.

PayPal also says that Apple needs to ensure certain things regarding site authentication. It therefore recommends the company to protect its customers and advise them to browse on IE 7 or 8 when it is ready, or Firefox 2 or 3, or may be Opera.

The Safari browser comes by default on Apple's Mac as well as the iPhone. Hence, PayPal is warning Apple users to switch on to new browsers as early as possible for a better Web browsing experience and have that indispensable factor called 'security'.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/8/2008