Unsafe Browsers to Be Banned By PayPal, Safari Among the Favorites

Browser vulnerabilities are among the main causes of web attacks because they allow hackers and malicious people to take over the control over a certain computer or just insert a dangerous code to harm the data stored on the system. Because of that, the PayPal may take the decision to ban browsers dubbed as unsafe and restrict their access on the website.

Honestly, this would be a great security measure because consumers using these old and so vulnerable applications are completely opened to attacks and, as long as they refuse to migrate to a more powerful solution, they are a danger especially for themselves.

What's really interesting is actually to see what PayPal considers to be an unsafe browser. Some time ago, the company said that "safer browser has the following characteristics: latest version, automatic software patches and upgrades, anti-phishing functionality to notify you when you try to access a suspected fake website and 128-bit encryption that protects data during transmission," as our own Filip Truta, Apple News Editor, wrote on February 29.

PayPal even mentioned a few browsers which may be blocked from accessing their website, but avoided to provide more information about which features such an application must have to be able to connect to their servers. "The alarming fact is that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 4 or even IE 3. Inevitably, this set of users is a subset of the passive group. We argue that it’s critical to not only warn users about unsafe browsers, but also to disallow older and insecure browsers," PayPal wrote in the "A Practical Approach to Managing Phishing" paper.

Most browsers available on the market come with all sorts of security features, including pop-up blockers, privacy protection tools and anti-phishing filters. And as you surely know, the phishing scams have always been a problem for PayPal because lots of attackers attempted to steal PayPal credential using fake websites.

Among the most popular browsers on the web, there's one big name which may be banned by PayPal, and this is Safari. Apple's Safari doesn't currently provide any phishing filter, so in case PayPal really decides to impose this security measure, the folks at the Cupertino-based company may have to rebuild their browser.

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