Recently, the Shmoo Group discovered that Firefox is vulnerable to precisely the exploit that i predicted in my 2002 paper—Ping

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The central point of my essay on the petname toolbar is that phishing is the result of name conflation.—Tyler

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So how, in this system, does the user come to trust Paypal (as opposed to someone pretending to be Paypal)?—Ben

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If I’m understanding the discussion so far, I think the answer is that the issue of trust is separate from the issue of identity.—Jed

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Indeed, but I am no closer to understanding how the user ever gets to a state where they can do anything useful.—Ben

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I gave some examples in my next message on this topic. Perhaps you could address them.—Jed

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I agree it solves the problem of confusable URLs.—Ben

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So the fact that the WWW does not currently support safe hyperlinking doesn’t bother you?—Tyler

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The fact that a site I don’t trust points to another site I don’t trust doesn’t particularly disturb me. Also, I have mechanisms that appear adequate to allow me to form trust relationships on the web as it exists today. A web consisting only of sites I trusted would be a very boring place. You appear to want me to read something into the word "web" other than "a pile of links to stuff, some of which I find useful". I don’t particularly see the value of redefining the word.—Ben