PayPal Denies It Will Block Safari

Despite reports that PayPal may drop support for Apple's Safari browser because it lacks anti-phishing features, PayPal now says it ain't so. Though PayPal telegraphed displeasure with Safari last January, they're now unambiguous about their position: "We have absolutely no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers, including Apple's Safari, from our website."

Comments

Re:Backpedaling faster tha you can say...

[cheater512]

They never said that they'd block it in the first place.
They said that they would block the insecure browsers.

Specifically browsers like IE 5.5 which is old and should never be used anymore.

Re:Wish Apple Would Fix it

[JustCallMeRich]

I wish apple would fix Safari (and Mail too) to better display the actual targets of links. View menu - Show Status Bar.

Now you have a little bar at the bottom of Safari that shows you the actual target of links.

Trying with Lynx:

[SanityInAnarchy]

lynx https://www.paypal.com/
SSL error:no issuer was found-Continue? (y) y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: cookie_check=yes Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: navcmd=_home-general Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: navlns=0.0 Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
# FINALLY there's a homepage. "Member Log In" is on the second page.
SSL error:no issuer was found-Continue? (y) y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
Refresh: 1 seconds
https://.../
SSL error:no issuer was found-Continue? (y) y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y
www.paypal.com cookie: (censored) Allow? (Y/N/Always/neVer)y ...

Ok, if I'd hit "a" to those cookies, it would've been a lot better. And there are a fscking LOT of cookies.

Now, I haven't actually tried to do anything with it so far, but I suspect that it would, in fact, work just fine. It's curious that it doesn't like the SSL -- I suspect that's a problem with my version of Lynx, as Firefox and Konqueror don't give me any SSL warnings. But other than that, Paypal isn't doing anything to block Lynx, and it looks reasonably navigateable.

Re:Trying with Lynx:

[JackieBrown]

It works fine in elinks

That isn't a difference based on browser

[patio11]

Its a difference based on whether you have a Paypal cookie on your system. If you do, they push the paypal option, since that means you move money from one Paypal account to another and Paypal gets an interchange fee but doesn't have to pay anything. If you don't, they give the credit card equal billing, since they know that maximizes the odds of them getting a transaction, even if they have to kick back most of their interchange fee to the credit card.

Since your IE and Firefox cookies are not shared, my guess is that you haven't logged in on IE recently. Try logging in for both browsers then logging out and attempting a purchase. You'll get identical behavior.

Disclaimer: IANAEOP (I am not an employee of Paypal) but half my business runs through them.

Too late, CTO should resign

[Ilgaz]

I invite you to check Macworld discussion at
http://forums.macworld.com/thread/98919?tstart=0

I have never seen a thing like that. Macintosh community hates them so much after that disastrous stupid statement that I STILL get new message alerts after 2 months as people keep commenting how stupid they are, Verisign bribed them, MS lapdog, eBay is scam.

This is a OS that loads ocsp on startup to check the SSL certs at core OS level:
Apr 22 09:07:29 quad /usr/sbin/ocspd[1735]: starting (system.log)

EV matters? How much it cost to a commercial site at size of Paypal? Does Paypal feel their consumers are insecure instead of using FREE data from community powered services like http://www.phishtank.com/ ?
Post a job listing for Cocoa/Carbon, Objective C developer. Cough some money and distribute your plugin. Don't use "No XUL" as excuse, it is easy to watch current URL on Safari. ICQ from 2003 can still read it.

Re:Wish Apple Would Fix it

[the JoshMeister]

I wish apple would fix Safari (and Mail too) to better display the actual targets of links.

Mail doesn't need to be fixed. Roll your cursor over any link and it will display a tooltip showing the URL to which the link would take you if clicked.

I would tend to agree that by default Safari isn't very helpful in this regard, but as previous posters already mentioned, the fix for Safari is simple: go to the View menu and select "Show Status Bar", or hold the Command key and press the / button. You only have to do this once, and Safari will keep this setting forever unless you turn it off.

Re:Are you sure?

[xaxa]

The increasing popularity of mobile browsing is an opportunity for Paypal to act as a mobile digital wallet. There's certainly no point in carrying a debit card if you can just use your phone. I'm guessing that is Paypal's aim. Whether or not they can beat the banks to direct money transfer is debatable though. But there's hardly any inconvenience through carrying a debit card anyway...

Having said that, in Japan some phones have transport passes integrated into them, and in London there's an integrated transport pass, credit card and RFID 'small purchase' card (for buying coffee etc), though I'm not sure how well the latter is catching on, I haven't seen anyone with one yet.

Paypal would have to reduce their fees a lot to gain much use by retailers, but maybe that will encourage the card processing companies to reduce their prices too.

Re:Wish Apple Would Fix it

[JustCallMeRich]

I now that was a troll, but I may be able to offer some insight for thers reading this thread that may be helpful to future Mac admins out there and may save some hassle - which is really what being an admin is all about IMHO - saving my users hassle. If they have no worries, I don't get calls and can get back to updating my Mac build or quelling political infighting with some technical facts...

Safari pulls it's network and proxy info from the OS. FireFox does not - it has that set in a pref. The Mac laptops in our company network need proxy settings, DNS info, and a search domain entered to get at all the intranet goodness, as well as make it out to the cloud. In my image I create a WORK location and an AWAY location for the network. The work location has all the network settings for, well, you get the idea. This makes it simple for the user to go under the Apple menu to Location and select WORK or AWAY and still be able to connect to whatever they need to on site or off site. And even that takes a little training.

Unfortunately, FireFox doesn't support that. So the FireFox users would have to go into FireFox and navigate the prefs to find the proxy settings and manually enter the proxy settings in the network, and disable them when they are off site - in addition to choosing the work or away location under the Apple menu. For those that want to know how to do this, the info is on our Mac intranet site and the users are free to do it. But it's just a couple extra steps to remember to do and undo. And for most of my corporate users they could care less which browser they are using - as long as it gets them to the internets theys iz wantin.

So I have my Mac build with both Safari and Firefox set up and configured for work locations - even the status bar showing on Safari. But when they go offsite and just select the AWAY location, only Safari works. Those that know how to make FireFox work will do those extra steps. Those that don't, won't generally care, or will ask me or the help desk and get refrenced to the intranet site for details on how to get it working.

I hope that proves useful for any other Mac admins out there facing the same issue. If you have a better solution, please share it.