Paypal, the net’s most popular payment service and a favorite target of scammers who send phishing emails, has announced it plans to block older browsers and any newer ones that don’t include anti phishing features from accessing its site. This includes older versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, and perhaps most surprisingly, Apple’s Safari browser would be completely banned.

          “It’s critical to not only warn users about unsafe browsers, but also to disallow older and insecure browsers,” said Michael Barrett, PayPal’s chief information security officer, in a paper released at last week’s RSA Conference. “Letting users view the PayPal site on one of these browsers is equal to a car manufacturer allowing drivers to buy one of their vehicles without seatbelts.”

The features that browsers must have to access Paypal are the ability to block known and suspected phishing sites and support for Extended Validation Certificates. These certificates are given to companies only after they pass stringent background checks and are more difficult to obtain than SSL certificates which are relatively commonplace.  Browsers with EV support show a green address bar on safe sites.

Current versions of both IE and Firefox support these features, but Safar, the default browser for Mac computers, the iPhone, and the iPod Touch, has neither.

         “Apple, unfortunately, is lagging behind what they need to do to protect their customers,” Barrett said. “Safari has got nothing in terms of security support, only SSL, that’s it.”

For now, users of older browsers such as IE 6, Firefox 1.5, and Opera 8 which do not offer anti phishing features will simply be warned and allowed to log in, while older browsers such as IE 3,4 and 5, Netscape 4.x, and  Firefox 1.x will be completely blocked.  A specific timetable for the new plan hasn’t been announced.

          “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 said.  Opera, IE, and Firefox are “safer, precisely because we think they are safer for the average consumer,” he added. “I’d love to say that Safari was a safer browser, but at this point it isn’t.”

So far Apple has had no comment.