As reported by Macworld, a recent interview with Michael Barrett, PayPal’s chief information security officer, reveals that “Apple, unfortunately, is lagging behind what they need to do, to protect their customers”. Barrett also said, “Our recommendation at this point, to our customers, is use Internet Explorer 7 or 8 when it comes out, or Firefox 2 or Firefox 3, or indeed Opera”. Barrett went on to explain:

“Unlike its competitors, Safari has no built-in phishing filter to warn users when they are visiting suspicious Web sites, Barrett said. Another problem is Safari’s lack of support for another anti-phishing technology, called Extended Validation (EV) certificates. This is a secure Web browsing technology that turns the address bar green when the browser is visiting a legitimate Web site.”

Apple representatives weren’t immediately available to comment on this story.

Internet Explorer 8 is now available and has some nice new features to offer like FaceBook integration, as well as some already offered by FireFox, such as Automatic Crash Recovery.