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It's very energy efficient, doesn't act like spyware (hello Chrome), allows you to use Sign in with Apple and Apple Pay and it syncs across your stuff to all other Apple devices. There I gave you four.

It works for everything wonderfully (with AdGuard) other than porn.

There you go. Now you know why people use Firefox on a Mac.
 
Firefox is the way to go or Edge, Safari is too limiting
It was until they changed their privacy policy.

I was using edge for a while, until they started monitoring traffic to insert ads. Chrome is a non-starter. and both are dead with the loss of real adblock.

So Safari is it. if a site doesn't work with the most common mobile browser, then I just don't use it.
 
Brave. I think you meant to say Brave 😜
Is there a reason why people keep recommending brave? Their actual page talks about basic attention tokens and watching ads to earn rewards. That doesn't sound very privacy-focused to me. It sounds like the classic "We'll block other ads but you can watch ours instead. Ours is safe. Pinky promise."
 
It was until they changed their privacy policy.

I was using edge for a while, until they started monitoring traffic to insert ads. Chrome is a non-starter. and both are dead with the loss of real adblock.

So Safari is it. if a site doesn't work with the most common mobile browser, then I just don't use it.
There is a good chance if the page don’t work on Safari, they are doing something shady.
 
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Malwarebytes gets the job done
Doing some research Bitdefender was rated better and didn't slow down computers as much. Malwarebytes was my 1st choice until I looked around.

There is a good chance if the page don’t work on Sarari, they are doing something shady.
No, not true. A few of the sites I need to go on for work do not work on Safari. These are portals and billing systems for our customers. Nothing shady at all.
I can't remember, but one of the banks my mom uses won't work on it also. Safari has a low market share for a reason.

I work in Cyber - don't underestimate the creativity and skill of the bad guys. The example shown may be junk, but there are some very very smart folks on the dark side.
Ans IA is making it harder and harder to detect fake shady sites.
 
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I've never understood how such pathetic phishing attempts could ever be even remotely successful. It's not 1998 anymore. Anyone who's ever used a computer at this point should be able to avoid the completely obviously scams. If you can't be bothered to learn the single most basic step of avoiding obvious scams online via something as simple as looking at the URL or email address, you get what you get. To call many of these "sophisticated" downplays the threat posed by attacks which actually are sophisticated.
 
Yet safari on the ipad hides bookmarks several layers down on their sidebar tempting you to just type the website.
 
Apple uses the security through obscurity method. Their release notes just mention security fixes unless someone has already published the security hole.
 
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I remember getting those while I was browsing a site on Windows 7, and it showed me Windows XP themed popups, lool

I always browse the Internet with an adblock. So it has been long since I last saw them
 
About every year for the last 10 or maybe 15 years some (obscure) security firm (most of which nobody ever heard from) is screaming something in the area of “Macs are now targeted more and more”, yet we still have to see something that really affects a large share of the Mac community. Of course we’ve seen some malware inside cracked software or the HandBrake incident, but those all affect a really small number of people.

So this is just another company that wants attention with 20 year old news. Time to ignore them.
No, it’s every other month from these groups. “HEY! If you bring your computer to my lab and allow us to open it, remove the CPU, fry one of the pins and then not put it back together, you could lose ALL THE VALUE OF YOUR COMPUTER! WHEN will Apple DO something about this! By the way the name of my security company is iSecureEwe, don’t forget that when you post this story to the entire social web.” And, it’s primarily because everything is so much better written than 20 years ago, that every exploit starts with ‘If the user does a stupid thing’ and would not draw attention to them without them leaving out that part.

Luckily, there are REAL security researchers that we may never know the name of that are finding the serious exploits and letting the appropriate folks know about them.
 
I've never understood how such pathetic phishing attempts could ever be even remotely successful. It's not 1998 anymore. Anyone who's ever used a computer at this point should be able to avoid the completely obviously scams. If you can't be bothered to learn the single most basic step of avoiding obvious scams online via something as simple as looking at the URL or email address, you get what you get. To call many of these "sophisticated" downplays the threat posed by attacks which actually are sophisticated.
There are currently people that still earnestly believe that when the Starbucks person asks them “What are you doing today?” that they actually want to know and NOT because their managers tell them they HAVE to say it. I’d figure those people and the ones that fall for phishing attempts are almost a perfect circle.
 
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How is Apple's marketshare "booming"? Apple consistently holds about 8-9% marketshare, with 2024's 9.2% down a bit from 2022's 9.8%.
They ARE indeed growing, impressively so, well over the 9% they’re known for. The install base is still massively non-Apple, but, in recent quarters, they’ve grown by MORE than the competition has shrank. I don’t understand it, but I acknowledge it’s a thing.
 
Apple uses the security through obscurity method. Their release notes just mention security fixes unless someone has already published the security hole.
They’re ALL published, some to Apple, some publicly. Sometimes the security researcher gets upset because Apple didn’t give THEM credit, but they forget that there’s more than one security researcher and if someone else reports it first, they get credit.
 
While I have Brave and Vivaldi at hand, I mostly use Safari. I almost never see those phishing pop-ups and indeed, the majority have all the looks of Windows and many more hints. It also helps to preemptively block bad advertiser servers on a network level.
 
"While phishing campaigns targeting Mac users have existed before, they have rarely reached this level of sophistication"

Did they unwittingly interview a chatbot powered by Apple Intelligence for this quote? What they're calling sophisticated, I'd call lazy. At least update the UI to not look like it was cribbed directly from Windows 11.

I've never understood how such pathetic phishing attempts could ever be even remotely successful.

I think a lot of these just hope they catch someone at the perfect time.

It's like all the package undelivered spam texts and emails we get. Even people who know those are fake will eventually have a day when they're waiting eagerly for a package that didn't arrive when expected and be briefly receptive to something that they would never otherwise fall for.

Also, lots of these scams target seniors who have dementia. If you've ever taken care of someone with dementia, you've seen how easy it is to sneak something past someone who's no longer working with a full deck of cards.
 
The real problem with these is the JavaScript tricks they use to make the page and browser lock up. Many users I have seen encounter this know it’s fake, but don’t know how to get rid of it.

Notification permissions for example is widely abused.

Browsers do need to do a better job of blocking these things. They don’t let untrusted software run wild. It’s annoying and I know because I did it for years with Noscript, but it’s a lot safer to have to allow sites to do anything special rather than doing it by default.
 
What would be the reason not to use it?
I love me some Apple, been a certified developer for over 30 years. But I can never use Safari — it doesn’t play well with a lot of web sites. Firefox is a lot more compatible, but occasionally, I’ll find a site where ONLY Chrome will work properly. (There are numerous health data-related sites for medical providers, where I see these incompatibilities.

Is it the fault of the website or Safari? I can’t be sure, but these kinds of problems have been going on for years.
 
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The only people at risk of falling for these things are probably people in their 70s-90s+.
Know some Facebook addicts who are substantially younger and at prime risk for this. The "Enter anything and clean up the mess later" crowd...
 
I never use Safari. Can't think of a single reason to use it really.
Safari isn't my first choice or desktop default, but I do use it often enough.

The problem in my world is Chrome. Know folks who use it "Because there are things on Facebook which only work with it!". Simply cannot make them realize that's a great reason to drop Chrome and FB...
 
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