Slashdot Mirror

from: http://www.smile.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?cid=11248 67052002&pagename=Smile%2FPage%2FsmView&c=Page

"We're the only UK online bank with the BS7799 Information Security certification from the BSI. That means we have an extremely secure Internet Banking service"

wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BS_7799

Plus every newspaper that ever runs a story on the most / least secure banks seems to always rank smile #1. I'm not a 'shill', I dont work for smile, I run my own games company. I'm just a happy customer.

And what is a "socialist" company?

Just a guess (I'm not the OP) but a workers' cooperative? Here in the UK they're not that rare - my bank is owned by one; one of the major supermarkets is the Cooperative Wholesale Society (which owns the Cooperative Bank/Smile), etc.

Incidentally, the Coop movement in the UK have their own political party, imaginatively called "The Cooperative Party" - in practice the only candidates they stand at elections are joint Labour Party/Cooperative candidates. They tend to be "right wingers" (in a UK Social Democratic sense) - Fabian rather than revolutionary.

A month or two ago smile.co.uk swapepd their system from using a popup to using the current browser window. Thbey have won numerous awards for security (not to mention customer service) in the UK. They told customers this change was to ensure greater security. Looks like they are one step ahead of such vulnerabilities again, unlike citibank or many others.
just another reason to switch to http://www.smile.co.uk/
I dont work there, just a very happy customer.

Is this browser compatible with banking sites?

It's compatible with my banks' sites (Co-operative Bank and Smile) Most (UK) banks seem to have realised that not allowing customers to use their facilities is daft. YMMV.

What do servers see this browser as? (Netscape?)

Mozilla 5 (servers see IE as "Mozilla 4 compatible - Mozilla has been in browser strings since way back). A browser string for Firefox 0.9.2 is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Is it really faster than Safari in Mac OS X?

I don't know, but possible not: the Firefox folk targetted Firefox at Windows and Linux - the Mac release of 1.0 was roadmapped to appear slightly after the Windows and Linux versions. I don't know if this is still the case. I'd guess Safari would be slightly faster, but to be honest there's only one way to find out - and that's for you to test it yourself ;)

Well, I bank online with Smile, and their secure account access works just fine with Firefox.

I think you may be basing your assumptions on the 'v1' online banking systems that a lot of banks initially put together. If you go and check again, I suspect you will find that the majority of banks that offer online services, and certainly those with the most computer-owning customers, have now moved to much more browser-neutral models - if enough people who don't use IE or a PC make a fuss about, and (importantly) threaten to take their custom elsewhere, the banks will do the right thing.

As for your idea about a 'Bank of Microsoft', that might just have worked 3-4 years ago, but now, with Microsoft's image tarred by security scares, they would probably command even less trust than the existing banks! :)

-MT.

Imagine if your checking account was suddenly cut in half, because the bank decided to be idealistic.

Just because a bank decides to be idealistic, doesn't mean it can't compete with the big names. Check out the Co-Op bank or, for you online junkies, their online partner.

It is possible to be innovative and still make your shareholders happy.

We will repay you any money that is taken from your account due to:

• any error by our staff or our systems
• a computer crime which is not found and stopped by our security system

1. Unauthorised access to computer material.
2. Unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences.
3. 3. Unauthorised modification of computer material.

We will repay you any money that is taken from your account due to:

• any error by our staff or our systems
• a computer crime which is not found and stopped by our security system

1. Unauthorised access to computer material.
2. Unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences.
3. 3. Unauthorised modification of computer material.

Smile in the UK have an ethical investment policy, and they use that fact extensively in their advertising. They're actively hoping that you'll allow your politics to influence your choice of bank.

Cheers,
Ian

• not supporting alternative browsers was losing roughly 10 per cent of possible visitors, which was particularly dangerous for a new banking service;
• not supporting alternative browsers was unethical.

It strikes me that the 'ethical lever' would be particularly powerful when charities are concerned.

Nonsense. Paypal doesn't exit in the ether, it exists at 6201 15th Avenue, Third Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11219.

Egg are an online or telephone-only set up too, but they are governed by laws. So are Smile and IF. PayPal aren't in a unique situation.

Cheers,br Ia

In the UK I've tried the following banks successfully. Barclays is all server side so will work in anything which can do secure connections. Smile is a java client which is abit strange. It works fine in Netscape running in KDE, but just displays a blank screen in Netscape under Gnome. If anyone has any ideas about why whether I'm runnig KDE or Gnome should make a difference I'd really like to know!

smile (at http://www.smile.co.uk ) works fine using Netscape 4.* under Linux and Solaris - this is even more amazing when you consider that it's a Java applet.

In fact, they are a great online bank, and I'd recommend it to anyone in the UK. Plus they're an ethical bank (part of the co-op) so you get to feel all self-righteous too. :-)

(One downer: they don't support MacOS but that won't concern too many /.ers).

nic

Of the others I've approached...

egg.com works, as long as you turn java off,, but it's so basic (savings and credit card only) and so SLOW to react (they respond to e-requests sometimes over a week later).

first-e.com and smile are impossible to apply under linux because they run afoul of the "long drop down list and keyboard freezing" bug in netscape... I couldn't even apply for first-e under windows as their forms were all messed up when using large fonts! When I contact them about it, they gave me step by step instructions to set my monitor to 800x600 with small fonts. Fine, but... I do not think I'd bank with them if I had to change fonts and resolution every time I wanted to do some banking!