This week Paypal announced that it will no longer process transactions that come from deprecated browsers. In this BBC news article a Paypal representative noted that there are still a significant number of people using very old deprecated browsers that do not carry the appropriate level of certificate security to safely allow for secure transactions to take place.
These insecure browsers allow for phishing websites to track the transactions which allow the criminal to gain access to a person’s personal information including passwords and credit card numbers.
It is important to remember to keep your browsers up to date. Criminals using phishing attacks create their fake websites in a way to take advantage of these security vulnerabilities. As described in the article, an obsolete browser will not trigger the Paypal script which determines whether the user is using a secure browser. If you are not using a secure browser, you cannot be sure if your personal information is vulnerable.
Paypal has taken the step to not allow for transactions from insecure browsers to take place as a way to inform their clients about the risks of using this deprecated technology.
Paypal said it was "an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4". [ Paypal to block ’unsafe browsers’ - BBC News Online ]
Paypal has also noted which browsers are safe and support EVSSL certificates. The current releases of Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 have full support, but Safari for both Mac and PC do not currently support EVSSL.
While we here in the office really like Safari as a browser, not all of us use it to make purchases over the internet.