Consumer Reports pans Safari's lack of phishing protection

Welcome to the 1password weblog.

I know that children and my parents' generation are likely to fall for this, but seriously... you should monitor your children's internet use, and my parents should know better.

Everything I know about internet security I learned in Kindergarten: Don't talk to, get in a car with, or take candy from strangers. If the "average" internet user could get this through their heads, we'd hardly need anti-phishing tools at all.

That's right. Initially Safari for windows was having a major bottleneck of pishing but the good thing is that now this issue has been solved. The issue of desktop bombing is also resolved. So, window users can now enjoy safari wihout any hassles.

http://www.safaribrowserwindows.com

Bah! They lie. My parents are extremely paranoid compared to the average PC user. They don't know enough to automatically know when someone's try to phish them, but they do know the real deal when they see it.

One of the better safeguards against phishing is switching your DNS to a third party service that monitors such things, such as as OpenDNS or ScrubIT.

This is a much better solution than relying upon Firefox's or Opera's built-in safeguards alone. I prefer the combination of Safari/OpenDNS over using an alternative browser.

I do agree Firefox 3 goes to great lengths to protect the user (the big red warning with the almost microscopic link allowing one to click through to the site is a nice touch). But the weakest link is always the end user and, ultimately, people need to learn that they do not have a relative in Nigeria who left them $10M and will transfer it to the bank of choice for only $5G.

On another note, as someone who uses Firefox, the green highlight in the address bar is barely catches my attention when I visit a trusted site. I wonder if others even notice it at all.

Consumer Reports should stick to things they know something about, like cars and refrigerators. They have proved time and again through the years that they know next to nothing about personal computers or the internet.

Phishing protection is lame anyway. I invariably end up turning it off after being annoyed by a false positive or two.

Safari does lack protection.
Sure, most people aren't that stupid or ignorant to click on a suspicious link in their email, but there is a percentage of people who still do...which is why "they" still try to trick you everyday by sending you more and more emails.

Why Apple refuses to add even phishing protection in Safari is quite worrying.

This article is ComputerWorld FUD at its finest.

I'm a CR online subscriber and I can't even find where Consumer Reports (or Fox) recommends—even in the paid sections—to "scap Safari." The only link to CR ComputerWorld bothered to post is just CR's annual survey of users' experiences with phishing.

So Keizer interviewed Fox and that's what he had to say or ComputerWorld/Keizer is just making stuff up. Even if it's the former, there's no "official" recommendation of dumping Safari on CR's site that I can see. I am a little disappointed if Fox is speaking out on CR's behalf—since the publication is usually very even-biased.