Why It’s PayPal’s Fault, Not The Browser
April 27, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
About a week ago there was some buzz floating around about how PayPal may block Safari because it doesn’t have phishing protection built in. This has since been retracted by PayPal:
PayPal: No plans to block Safari
A representative for PayPal on Friday said the ecommerce firm is developing features to block customers from logging into PayPal when using obsolete browsers on outdated or unsupported operating systems, but has no intention of blocking Safari as a company white paper seemed to imply.
“An example of such a browser/OS combination might be, for example, Internet Explorer 4 running on Windows 98,” said spokesperson Michael Oldenburg. “In doing so, we better protect our customers from viewing a phishing site through their browser. We have absolutely no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers, including Apple’s Safari, from our website.”
(Nugget by AppleInsider)
Might I suggest that it’s not the browser’s responsibility to block security threats on particular web sites? Maybe it’s my not-liking of blaming others for your own problems but I believe that PayPal and PayPal only is responsible for their own PayPal.com site. It’s their job to keep their customers safe, not browser developers, or any other type of web application developer.
Sure, I have a little bit of a bias here. I used to be a large (in my mind) PayPal merchant, who ditched all that in favor of better customer service elsewhere. I know I’m not alone in that boat. However, I feel the same way when eBay blames Apple or denies support of the site if you’re using Safari on eBay.
(Wait a second, I may be on to something here, both PayPal and eBay are owned by eBay and both were virtually run into the ground under Meg Whitman).
To close out this ranting post, let me say that I fully support web application developers and browser developers who want to protect their own customers from the dark side of the Internet, but I don’t think the fault and responsibility should lie on their shoulders as opposed to a multi-national corporation who certainly has the tools and resources available to help themselves help the world but chooses not to.
Broadcom 3G ‘phone on a chip’ - Yay for Mobile!
October 15, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Broadcom introduces 3G on chip | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
Stories like this really get me excited, it’s amazing what technology can do for us and how we can use it in convergence and new-media operations. This phone-on-a-chip may just be the best thing since WiMAX died… imagine having one of these built into your new ultra-portable Apple laptop for Internet, anywhere. Now, I do love my AT&T Laptop Connect card, but I can’t afford it anymore, so it’s going back to the store… would I keep my contract if it was built into my laptop? Yeah I think I would, it’d be too easy to use, no more trying to figure out what wifi network I should be on, and why my cable connection isn’t working at home, I would be all Internet, all the time.
Of course the linked article mainly looks at this innovation as simply a way to shrink cellphones, but I don’t think people want even smaller phones, the rest of the phone experience has not caught on yet, and my iPhone is not the smallest phone I’ve had, but it does have the best user experience I’ve ever encountered in a cellphone.
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2007-09-12
September 12, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Up earlier than I wanted to be #
- Just getting back from Shelter Insurance Gardens #
- yay for iPhones! #
- downloading the the NBC Pilots onto Tivo #
- Checking up on AppleInsider for some rumors! #
- Reading about the Google Boys landing their jet at NASA for kicks #
- Steamed veggies= dinner tonight #
- New Moodblast version out, added more services to notify. #
- @profy darn right! #
- Watching the ‘Bionic Woman’ Pilot on Tivo #
-
OtherProfiles
