Litan said that PayPal's decision was smart, but smacked of too little, too late. "They're really anxious to bring more shoppers to eBay, but consumers are staying away because of the fraud," she said. "They're right in trying to ensure the safe use of PayPal on the seller and the buyer side, but this is something they should have done a year ago."
According to Barrett's plan, older browsers such as IE3 and IE4 would be among those blocked. Conceivably, the no-longer-supported Firefox 1.x would also be kept off the site. In the paper, however, Barrett didn't call out either Firefox or Safari by name.
"I don't think it's really an issue," said Litan, referring to Safari. "How hard would it be to add those features? And I would think that most Mac users also have Firefox anyway."
PayPal did not specify a timetable when it would switch on its browser blocking, and did not reply to request for one on Friday. Apple also did not respond to an e-mail asking for comment.
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Reprinted with permission from Computerworld. Story copyright 2008 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.
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