Yes, it's pretty close.  However where SSH warns you whenever you encounter a new server, the SSL in your browser only warns you when you encounter a new CA (Certificate Authority).<p>For the browser to behave more like SSH, it would have to maintain a list of <i>individual sites</i> which you have accepted as genuine.  Then if you get a phishing email asking you to click a fake link such as <a href="https://lo0m.cc" rel="nofollow">https://lo0m.cc</a>, you will get a warning even if the lo0m.cc site has a certificate "verified by Equifax" or whomever.  This is a good example of where the current SSL protocol utterly fails.<p>When you visit the real loom.cc site which you originally trusted, you should see a happy warm reassurance in the browser bar, maybe including a pet name or avatar.  But when you visit lo0m.cc, you should see the entire browser framed in red with a warning that this is the first time you have ever visited this site and you could be the victim of a phishing expedition.  Something like that.  I'm hand-waving a bit now.  And it may get annoying for people at first, as they establish trust in their first 20 banking, gaming, or social networking sites.  Kind of like installing a new CA root 20 times right?  You don't want it to be <i>too</i> easy or people might just "click through" unconsciously.  But personally I don't find this to be a great difficulty with SSH.<p>Indeed the building blocks are all there in SSL, namely (1) the verification of digital signatures, and (2) the negotiation of a symmetric encryption key.  Some may carp about the protocol or the code being a mess, but as a black box it works just fine.<p>I think browser writers could phight phishing more effectively by thinking outside the box of implicit trust in central authority.