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PayPal, eBay’s electronic payment service, has planned to take the dramatic step of blocking people using older versions of Web browsers in order to prevent phishing attacks.

PayPal said a “significant” group of people still use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 3, released in 1996, and IE 4, which debuted in 1997. Those browsers lack a phishing filter, which can block users from accessing a reported phishing Web site.

“In our view, 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,” according to a paper released during the RSA security conference in San Francisco earlier this month. It also could mean eventual trouble for users of Apple’s Safari browser, which has no phishing filter.

Phishing sites are designed to look like the legitimate Web sites of major brands such as banks and seek to elicit financial and personal information. Users are often lured to the sites through unsolicited e-mail, or can unwittingly land on one if a phisher has bought a domain with a convincing-looking name or one with slightly differently spelling.

Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9 have phishing filters, but Apple’s browser — Safari — does not. Safari also does not support Extended Validation SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificates, issued to Web sites that have been vetted as legitimate.

For Web site with that certificate, IE shows a green bar. Firefox’s address bar changes with white to beige and Opera denotes a safe site.