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And you have to enter the password using the mouse and an on-screen keyboard so you can't copy/paste the password from a password manager.

Westpac are reported not to be vulnerable to this hack, but their online banking usernames are a 8 digit number and the password are only six characters. The available characters are [a-z] and [0-9]. This is the login page.

In a step that should move Opera to a higher position on the browser usage statistics charts, Opera will change the default browser User Agent (UA) to identify itself as Opera - no more as Internet Explorer (IE).

I'm told Westpac do as well.

Westpac do, but only if you're a Business or Corporate customer... It doesn't help those of us with personal accounts...

I'm told Westpac do as well.

Westpac do, but only if you're a Business or Corporate customer... It doesn't help those of us with personal accounts...

I have the opposite experience. My step father was sick of popups, so I told him about mozilla. He was all happy until he tried to use his internet banking site - the page wouldn't render in any way readably. I emailed the site complaining - I basically got a " - we only support IE. Sorry." Lucky my bank is not that one - mine works with anything I've thrown at it.

I just followed my own link, and found that it renders fine now in firefox. But it didn't used to. Honest.

Not sure about telcos, but lots of universities use OSS heavily, and even a number of banks (with the proud exception of PestWhack) here in Australia are linux-friendly or at least non-linux-hostile.

Seems to me that the biggest sticks in the corporate mud for insisting on Microsoft are the Federal and State governments. I'm sure it's not because of the advice they're getting from their IT mavens.

The only 2 sites I've ever found that required IE were Westpac's and NineMSN's.

Westpac serves up a a crippled left-hand menu thingy for Mozilla, unless you tell Mozilla to masquerade as IE, and then it works fine. I have told Westpac about it several times, and they usually ignore me, or call back a week later and tell me to upgrade to the latest version of Netscape. When I tell them that I already have, they ask for the version number, and say, "Oh, sorry. Not as recent as version 7; try version 4!". Tosses...

NineMSN is a join project between the Nine Network and Microsoft, so it's not too surprising that it doesn't work correctly with Mozilla. By the way, the only thing that doesn't work is the live chat feature - I went there one time to talk with some guests on Nine's "60 Minutes" program and was told to upgrade my browser AND operating system. I sent them that I'd just made a .NET account to use their stupid chat, and told them what happened, and invited them to bite me, and the fuckers pulled my .NET account.

But apart from that, I've never had any problems with this 'IE only' crap that I hear others complaining about.

Give me some examples of sites that are IE-only, someone. Please.

Here in Austrealia, the bank Westpac's online banking works in every single browser I throw at it. OmniWeb, Chimera, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, it doesn't matter. It seems they don't check what your browser is - they just let it work.

Sure, there's a few niggling issues (sometimes a lower scrollbar appears in a few browsers, and I need to scroll a little to the right), but all in all it works great with virtually anything. Hell, I even applied for a personal loan online without issue.

It's been enough to keep my loyal to a bank, and nobody likes banks...

Here in Austrealia, the bank Westpac's online banking works in every single browser I throw at it. OmniWeb, Chimera, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, it doesn't matter. It seems they don't check what your browser is - they just let it work.

Sure, there's a few niggling issues (sometimes a lower scrollbar appears in a few browsers, and I need to scroll a little to the right), but all in all it works great with virtually anything. Hell, I even applied for a personal loan online without issue.

It's been enough to keep my loyal to a bank, and nobody likes banks...

Here's how at least one bank in Finland does it.

You don't get to choose a password. You are assigned a customer ID code and a sheet of one-time PIN numbers. Upon logging into the system, you must give both the customer ID code and the next PIN number in sequence, after which that particular PIN ceases to be valid and you must use the next number on the sheet. This way, even though someone listened in on your keyboard, they can not benefit from knowing your PIN code, since it is never the same.

The same applies when making transfers: on the same sheet with your PIN numbers are a bunch of other PIN numbers which are used for validation. When you tell the system to proceed with your transfer, the computer will query you for a particular PIN number ("please give PIN F") to which you must answer correctly. When you finally run out of PINs, they'll send you a new sheet.

Of course, this whole thing requires that you keep your Customer ID code and your PIN sheet totally separate - and that you keep the PINs secure. But then again, that is what you have to do with your credit card, anyway =).

Of course, the site is protected by 128 bit SSL and the works - so I feel pretty confident about the whole online banking idea.

Compare that to WestPac in Australia, which I've had had the privilege to be acquainted with during the past weeks: single password, which is 6 CHARACTERS AT MAXIMUM and may NOT contain any punctuation marks... And if someone grabs your connection, they can do whatever you want with your account... Eww.

Disclaimer: I am just a customer to these two banks, nothing more.