“PayPal, the online payment system owned by eBay, will prevent people who use older Web browsers that don’t have built in phishing detectors from accessing its site, InfoWorld reports. While the move won’t stop people with old browsers from visiting fake PayPal sites, the company hopes that the move will force people who frequent the real PayPal to upgrade,” Ben Worthen blogs for The Wall Street Journal.
“We just spoke to PayPal. It seems we in the media are reading too much into this. It will block people using old browsers and old operating systems, but contrary to many reports it will not block Apple’s Safari browser,” Worthen reports.
Full article here.
The funny thing is that the blocked browsers will work only on phishing sites if the real Pay Pal site actually blocks them.
How far does that actually improve security?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Well looks like all that alarmist PayPal trash talking that went on yesterday was a waste of everyone’s time.
None the less….I still have to use more than one browser b/c Apple refuses to make Safari 100% internet compatible.
Just my $0.02
Making blocked browsers work only on phishing sites and not the real Pay Pal site improves security by letting the phishers empty the phishee’s bank accounts, therefore having nothing left to steal.
pong: Making blocked browsers work only on phishing sites and not the real Pay Pal site improves security by letting the phishers empty the phishee’s bank accounts, therefore having nothing left to steal.
That makes sense, of course!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Apple refuses to make Safari 100% internet compatible.
No, Apple refuses to make Safari 100% Microsoft compatible. Many websites code for Internet Exploder, complete with Microsoft’s non-compliant extensions that only work with Exploder.
Ray,
You are displaying your ignorance. Please stop. It’s hurting you.
“Internet compatible” is a meaningless term you made up. So what percentage is Safari? 60%? 80%? You don’t know because you made it up.
My guess is that you have one or two sites that you visit that don’t support Safari. That is not Safari’s fault, it’s the fault of the developers who use proprietary, non-platform agnostic technology.
I am a web developer. If anything, Safari is more “internet compatible” (again, completely arbitrary phrase).
As qka said, it’s MSIE that is the problem. They created their own proprietary “standards” and now every web developer has to cater to their “standards.” Meanwhile, every other browser in the world follows a list of accepted, clearly defined rules for rendering web pages. Safari adheres to this list quite thoroughly. Even better than Firefox.
@Ray
“None the less….I still have to use more than one browser b/c Apple refuses to make Safari 100% internet compatible.”
Ahahaha..hahaha.hahaha… OMG.. Ray did you just crawl out from under a rock? LOL
I invented Internet Compatibility.
-A.G.
Ray,
Are you trying to compete with Zune Tang for the absurd comedy title?
It seems to me everyone’s missing the REAL surprise in the article —
“It seems we in the media are reading too much into this.”
Is anyone else here surprised at some actual HONESTY and INTEGRITY in the tech journalism field? (From someone besides Daniel Eran, that is.)
I applaud you, Mr. Worthen.
especially financial sites: TD Ameritrade, Scottrade, Zecco, etc. all do NOT play nicely with Safari. I wish either Apple, or they, would get this straightened out!
@ C1,
Careful – tick off AG and minions, and Nickelback will be virally inserted into your dreams…
I still can not get flash video working correctly on all of the sites I navigate. On some it works, on some it works on certain pages but not others. I’ve worked on this problem for hours to no avail… all I can figure is there’s some legacy hiccup in my machine I can’t reinstall over… it makes me sad – because it all works as advertised in Firefox. I can’t explain it.
Being a Mac fan here, I think we should fend for ourselves here and protect ourselves as consumers. Just because someone can’t access some web page because Apple won’t accept adding extra code for getting MS code to work doesn’t mean we should attack someone for getting terminology wrong. Very ignorant fan boy-esque of you all to play on that part while brushing incompatibility under the carpet.
Microsoft flung it’s code on the net and there is no reversing that fact. These websites using such code will be around for a long time and as such Apple should make Safari compatible to allow us customers less hassle. Unless Microsoft is stopping Apple from doing so I don’t see why they wouldn’t. What helps Apple’s customer base is satisfaction and it’s obvious some people happen to feel the same as Ray.
I myself have not found much incompatibility on websites I’ve been encountering lately. I just bought a shiny new iMac 2 weeks ago and yet to find problems net-wise. It is such a good time now to buy a Mac I can say with joy! I wish we could compare brain activity of someone on a Mac and someone on a PC and see how stress levels compare in an average day. Do scientists have a machine that can measure happy?
Oh that you guys’ were web developers. When a websiteb is created, a web designer basically has to design it twice: once according to W3 standards, and then again to make it work with IE. This is a source of perpetual frustration for almost every web designer I know. It’s not like IE can do everything a modern browser like Safari can do, it’s just different code. It’s like IE just doesn’t do anything you’d expect it to, so you have to fix all the IE bugs in your site using messy IE hacks or “conditional comments.”
The corporate world had become entrenched in MS, which means all their cool-aid drinking MS designers/developers made things using MS-proprietary technology (which MS developed as a means of lock-in). But in the last 6 years the browser market has changed drastically. Now it’s just taking a while for all the websites to catch up with web standards.
People should be writing the companies who’s websites are bit Safari compatible and asking them for Safari compatibility. That’s the problem that needs to be addressed.
If Safari were to add compatibility for MS’ buggy and messy behavior, it would completely defeat the purpose of even developing a modern browser. And it would only perpetuate the problem. MSIE is the definition of archaic buggy browsers.
correction:
paragraph three, line one: “bit” = “not”
Reality Check needs to look up the definition of proprietary. Microsoft is doing proprietary things with IE specifically to lock out competing browsers like Safari. Licensing those technologies from MS wouldn’t do any good because MS would simply create more of them that Apple (and others) would also need to license. It’s a vicious circle that would only benefit MS! Other browser makers would have increased costs and effectively remain locked out of many sites, while MS would make more money! Users would be locked in to IE because the alternatives would disappear.
“It seems we in the media are reading too much into this.”
No… it sounds like PayPal backtracking.
Mr. Worthen spoke to PayPal… AFTER PayPal made their original statement and received a lot of negative online commentary regarding the overall stupidity of their plan.
Just more subtle FUD.
Not Nickelback!!! Anything but that! ARGGGGGGG!!!*!*!*&!!
I know all about Internet Compatibility!!!
Um I still hate paypal and refuse to use it.
“Today I use mainly Safari because it uses CSS best and above all for the typography. Even Firefox can learn from Safari’s typography. Why is it that so few programs handle text well? Why is typography so lousy on the screen?” – World Wide Web co-inventor Robert Cailliau
Robert Cailiau said that about Safari 2 back in August 2007.
Safari 3 is the most W3 compliant browser there is. If web developers cannot create web sites that work correctly on Safari, then they are not doing a very good job. It is as simple as that.
Whenever I develop web sites, I have to put code in to make adjustments for the different browsers. I am sick of it. I have to run Safari, Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, and Internet Explorer, and double check that the site works on each one.
What is worse is that developers still insist on creating web sites that use ActiveX and are more IE compliant than they are W3 compliant.
Correction, he may have been referring to Safari 3. I thought 3 had not been released yet. 3 was released in June, so he could have been talking about either one. Regardless, the point is still valid.
@Logan People should be writing the companies who’s websites are bit Safari compatible and asking them for Safari compatibility.
You’re almost right, but not quite right.
What I do is to contact the company who own the web site and request that they make their site standards compliant, because then it will work on any browser running on any device. These days, people access the internet using an increasing variety of methods, the days of being able to assume that 98% of the hits will be from Windows PCs running IE have long gone.
In order to concentrate the mind of the site owner, I always mention their biggest rival and explain how their site works flawlessly. Never address this sort of query to the web team, they won’t care. Instead direct it to the sales dept or senior management, they’re the ones who will worry that they’re losing sales to their rivals as a result of the web authors being incompetent and they are also the ones who employ the web authors.