Slashdot Mirror
Online Banking And Browser Support
robbo writes "Earlier this week, The Register ran a piece on major UK banks and E-commerce sites' refusal to support alternative browsers for online banking, and they followed up with a list of saints and sinners. The reasons vary from requiring support for proprietary technology to security. My own bank only recently started supporting Netscape 6 (but they still don't support Mozilla). Clearly, support for Mozilla, Konqueror, or Galeon are absolutely necessary if projects like GNUCash can successfully integrate online banking. How does the Slashdot crowd find their banking support? Is your bank a sinner or a saint?"
My bank isn't online yet you insensitive clod.
Mozilla 1.1 works just fine at my little Credit Union (Only 2 offices).
So if a tiny little non-profit credit union can do it, then the larger banks should have no problem.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I hesitate to call any bank a Saint, but in at least this one regard, First Citizens are more Saint than Sinner.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
2 years ago Wells Fargo had an issue with the latest Netscape, but aside from that they've supported every Mozilla I've ever used.
Sig!
Kudos to Nationwide (UK Building Society), whose online banking site I've successfully used with Mozilla and Konqueror (3.0) as well as IE. Everything seems to work as it should.
I've finally switched to identifying as Opera.
I don't have any problems with any of my 4 online bank sites.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
netbank rocks -- it's great for folks like me who move a lot and don't need physical bank access. Free bill payment, plus great interest rates and I don't think I've ever paid a fee for anything.
Works fine for me in Mozilla, and has ever since I switched to moz last year.
I used to be with SFNB, the first totally "online" bank, but when they were bought out a few years ago, they started charging fees like a regular bank, which kind of defeated the whole point of reducing transaction costs by being online.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I use Chase for a few credit cards and USBank as a primary checking/savings bank and I have had no problems with Mozilla (on Windows or Linux) since about Mozilla 0.8. I don't even have to turn on user-agent spoofing at all.
To make banks listen you have to speak in the only language they know: money. If their site doesn't support your preferred browser, close your account and make sure you let them know it's because they don't support you. Then just find another bank that does, it doesn't sound like it would be all that difficult.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
To be fair, it's probably not the Banks etc that set the terms to limit the browsers that access their sites. It's lazy developers, which are almost certainly web-dev companies trying to complete a project that they've managed to land by bidding low.
;-)
I've been guilty of it in the past - having to rush out a project, and not taking the time to test on every browser across every platform. The "IE only" disclaimer is an excuse for the most part.
It's worth complaining to the company though, especially if you mention they're being ridiculed on a number of extremely popular tech news sites
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
www.waterhouse.com doesn't work for beans in anything except IE, and the site has always been very cluttered and slow.
The banks are doing wrong something else; they are "developing" for certain browsers, while they /should/ be designing with accepted web standards.
Then there would be less problems. Web designers and browser developers can then both spend more time on adding functionality, because they only have to support 1 peer instead of n.
My bank, the Dutch ABNAMRO, states somewhere that they only support IE. But Mozilla works, although a tad ugly.
Wamu is great as far as cross-browser support. I only have two complaints:
1) They block ICMP requests. Before I fixed my firewall (forcing the MTU), I couldn't get to the site.
2) Javascript that sets focus to the Username field *after* the page finishes loading (onLoad()). If you're already typing the password at this point, you look up, and just typed it (viewable) in the Username box.
Oh, make that 3 complaints:
3) It's far from realtime...
Other than these minor issues, I have never had a problem with any SSL-capable browser on any platform (even the HTML/CSS/tables all line up correctly).
---
I cancelled my Capital One card over their refusal to allow Mozilla. Spoofing the UA header doesn't work, as they obtain this via Javascript (which must be enabled). Moz doesn't (yet?) let you override the UA that javascript returns...
I've emailed Cap One many times, and even tried to explain to the Phone Monkey when I cancelled the card why I was cancelling. Unfortunately, this person understood none of what I was saying...
Of course I've also emailed Flipdog.com, VistaPrint.com, and other sites over issues like this. Pisses me off, and I do hope AOL one day ships a Gecko/Mozilla-based browser for this reason...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
TD CanadaTrust is easily supporting alternatives. I have used both Chimera and Opera (IE masquerade) succesfully.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
Things will only change if you actually do something about it. I *always* complain if I have the time, I will mail the webmaster and point out that there is an HTML standard, point them at a dodgy validation of their site via validator.w3.org, and point out that they lose money, one way or another.
So get off your ass, knock up a form letter, keep it handy, and complain!
The future is partly in your hands.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
According to the same article, Chase Manhattan's online web client has serious problems with stability, security and breaches of privacy as well as a severe lack of open standards at almost every level of the implementation.
Having used it, I can vouch that this is true. The GUI is exclusively ActiveX, which works only on some versions of IE. I have to assume there is some windows web/db system driving the backend, at least in front of the mainframe (or whatever is holding the real bank records).
And it seems this is rather common among bank clients, even among smaller banks and credit unions. On three bank sites I looked at recently, two explicitly stated that IE was necessary, and on the third it was implied.
But I could never find the Loan Officer Action Figure!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
What about Opera masquerading as IE or netscape?
Capital One determines the browser using JavaScript, not the UA header. Unfortunately overriding the UA string does not override what JavaScript returns. And the site of course doesn't work at all w/o JS...
It was enough to cancel my card...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
You can find a partial list of banks/cc companies and their Mozilla support here
I only care because I've been following the capitalone.com bug for months with no help whatsoever from them.. Oh well. The MBNA site for my Linux Fund card works fine. I'll be cancelling my capitalone card soon.
Convenient for people too lazy to write a check by hand, or go to a drive through teller, or something. Yes, some people may not have cars, but they find a way to get to work, don't they?
Banks have limits on how many teller assisted transactions one can do (usually per quarter or statement). Also, some people work during all bank hours (usually 9 to 5).
The internet may not be as secure as anyone would wish it to be, but it's still more secure than handling things in the branches. As a former teller, I can tell you that there are massive amounts of fraud that bank branches have to watch out for. With a good password your information should be safe.
I've been using online banking since the whole thing started... using the web for probably seven years, with SFNB (the first online bank, showing off S1's software), to RBC and now RBC/Centura. They've always listed such-and-such browser version requirements, and I've never had a problem using another browser before.
How many banks really *block* a given browser? And if they do, how many really wouldn't work if you masqueraded your user agent?
It sucks that these places don't officially support other browsers, but if anyone here has ever worked on an externally-facing web-based software package, you know that there is just so many combinations of things your QA department can test, and a good company will only say they support those, even if they know others would work. Its not responsible to say you support Mozilla if you've only ever tested Netscape 6, officially.
While in theory it would be great for banks to support everything out there, the reality is they just can't. They have to pick the biggest browsers and target their software for them. Imagine if they said they supported any browser available, how many different tech people would you need to sort through a problem? "Well, it works on IE, Netscape, and Opera, but Mozilla nd Konquere don't work, we need to figure out the problem and then rework the whole page." And they woudl also have to support user calls on every browser, which could also be a nightmare. This isn;t a generic website, this is banking information. They need to limit the possible ways things can break, which means they need to limit the software that can be used. If there is a problem discovered with Opera (for example) that suddenly means the information going to your browser isn't secure, people will blame the bank, not the browser. If your password gets hacked because Konquer (or IE, or whatever) does something wrong, people will hold the bank responsible, even if it's because they didn't upgrade their own browser.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
[/rant]
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
I use the online banking of HSBC all the time, in mozilla and konqueror, with no problems at all. Well recommended.
I know First Union (who either bought, or was bought by Wachovia) works in Opera, Mozilla, and Konqueror, and works well (tables properly aligned, etc).
Note that some sites don't check the brower string at all. Instead, they do the proper thing, and simply force a specific (or minimum) encryption level (say, 128 bit).
The ones that check the UA string for a specific browser or set of browsers, are denying potential customers access. I can't stand when they do that.
Simply forcing a minimum encryption level is all that is needed IMO. It should not matter what browser you are using, if it's SSL-, forms-, and tables-capable, and perhaps JavaScript-capable, then it should be just fine.
Hell, I'd love to see an online banking site with a "lite" or "text" version, for smaller (but SSL-capable) devices...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Bank of America works great with Mozilla. Back when they were NationsBank, it took them a little while to support Moz, but their support for Netscape was fine until they caught up.
I wonder how many of the "sinner" banks use IIS? NationsBank uses Netcape/iPlanet so in that regard they haven't sold out to the dark side, yet. Does the server platform somehow reflect on their browser support??
Ahhh! This is the very cause of the problem! Why are they acting like IE is the "standard" and everything else is "alternative!" Is Ford standard, but Chevrolet alternative?
Another scary point is that these articles indicate that browser spoofing often works. This means that the only reason some of these sites don't work, is because they refuse to! There are no real incompatibilities
And I use Royal Bank.. their site supports everything I've tried. I was so amazed I sent their tech support an email about how great it was to be able to use Konqueror to do my banking.
I don't do this, but you could use a proxy (Proxomitron under Windows, or a unix alternative), to modify the javascript entirely"
function isBrowserOK() { return true ; }
The problem with this is having the proxy make the SSL connection. Proxomitron cn do this, but so far I've preferred to have SSL simply pass through the proxy unaltered.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Editors: Next time check that your shining examples aren't just fool's gold.
I'm getting more and more annoyed hearing about little tiny credit unions that work happily with Opera, Moz, and Phoenix while my monolithic, monopolistic (actually, in Canada it's more properly described as an oligopoly) behemoth of a bank won't recognize my browser.
On the plus side, kudos to ING Direct (the Canadian subsidiary of the European ING Group) for supporting Opera.
~Idarubicin
The thing is, most of the bank require the browser to be IE, but you can still access them by changing the User-Agent. Most of the time, the site features are fully usable.
:)
Of course, this shows how stupid they are at blocking non-IE browsers, since it works well without it, but I think it's mostly a question of caring for the minority, because more than 90% of web users use IE.
What about geeks switching banks for one who do care for them ?
theefer
I bank with a small credit union and Galeon works fine with their pages, and the system's pretty fast. I prefer credit unions to big name banks when I can get them. They seem less inclined to screw you over anyway.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Bull.
Why should a bank have anything on their site that requires a specific browser? Its not a game site, its a bank. As long as they stick to some very simple rules, any browswer will work.
Their site works fine with Galeon, Mozilla, and IE. I haven't tried Konqueror. Online banking in Canada is part of most account packages (there are no extra fees just for online banking). An online transaction is counted as a transaction towards your regularly allowed number of transactions (which could be unlimited if you keep a certain minimum).
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
Well here in Austria the Raiffeisen Bank had a few incompatibilities with Netscape 6 (when it came out) and Opera 5. I just called them, told them what it was and how to fix it and a week later the online banking thingy worked with all last generation browsers.
On the other side there are banks here that still use custom windows software with dial-in (cool for all Linux, Apple, DSL and Cable users/owners isn't it) or bet on Java Applets which of course only work in one browser be it Netscape or MSIE. Don't ask me how they manage to get applets working only on one platform and browser. Well i would switch bank if my online banking solution does not work for me - so switch and tell your bank why you switched, then things might change.
Tried it in Mozilla, opera, Pheonix, and IE. Works fine in all cases.
http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/
I've had no trouble with Mozilla and TD's Easyweb service. Pay bills, transfer money, etc. Nice clean layout too.
Since when does the minority dictate how those who must target the majority do business?
I completely agree. Only last week I had to listen to the cheek of some idiot saying how I should have put a wheelchair ramp in so he could access my store! The week before that some black guy complained because I wouldnt serve him - it's my right isnt it?
I've used the following companies at various points in the past (and a few I still use):
Fleet Bank/Credit Services: refused to let me log in using a non-Windows browser. I closed my accounts w/ them specifically because they wouldn't even respond to queries regarding compatiblity issues w/ their website.
MBNA: No problems using either Netscape 4.x or Mozilla for Linux. Didn't like the way they have bill payment setup on their website, but no problems accessing.
Citibank/AT&T Universal: They both use the same website (although you have to have separate login names). No problems using either Netscape 4.x or Mozilla for Linux.
Discover: No problems using either Netscape 4.x or Mozilla for Linux. They were the first credit card company that I ever came across to allow online account access & bill payment (Citibank wasn't far behind them).
redit Union (local, one branch college credit union that I still use): No problems using either Netscape 4.x or Mozilla for Linux. Mozilla occasionally has difficulties displaying the account history table (the first column will take up the entire width of the window, and the rest get crammed into tiny columns), reloading the page a few times will usually fix it.
In case you hadn't figured it out, these are all US based institutions.
Since about Mozilla 9.9, online banking at allfirst.com has worked quite well. All I do with it is to check my account balances and histories, and transfer money between checking and savings, so maybe there are some other features that don't work, but it's fine for me. You can download stuff in MS Excel format, CSV, PDF, etc.; it's pretty good.
Now, as far as banks go, Allfirst isn't the best in the world, but since I don't exactly have piles of money from my lowly freshmeat contractor and college newspaper jobs, it'll do for the present
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
With a good password your information should be safe.
I never tell anyone my secret password - and its so obvious no one would think of it!
pASSword
hehe.
I'm sure this is flamebait, but....
The problem is that there is an open set of standards out there that banks should be developing to- not specific browsers. Otherwise, there isn't any point in having standards, is there?
And yes, you can code to standards without killing cross-browser compatibility. I think the idea that you can't is one of the biggest myths of web development. It takes work, but then if you are a professional that should be your job.
Generally speaking, I think these sites come around through lazy or inexperienced developers who only know or are required to use a specific set of tools because it's 'cost-effective' and/or 'faster' instead of actually doing their job.
Whether it's the developers fault or management is up in the air- probably a little bit of both.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
First Internet Bank supports Mozilla very, very well. This almost makes up for the fact that the first version of their software didn't support Mozilla or Netscape at all.
The fact that they can get changes made to their software fairly easily in response to customer complaints / suggestions is not terribly surprising considering that their software vendor, until recently, was run by their CEO and Chairman of the Board.
Banco do Brasil supports Mozilla/Netscape.
They have implemented a java based 'virtual keyboard' a while ago and this broke mozilla support. Then, when java 1.4 was out, every thing was back to normal. I could use on-line banking from anywhere again.
\m/
No, the way things will REALLY change is if:
- If the group of linux geeks grows to more than just a miniscule, fringe group
- Open source coders develop developer & platform tools as robust as those offered by the likes of Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc. Right now, nothing approaches these folks, and only a fool IT manager would literally "Bet the bank" on unaccountable, open source technologies.
Don't get me wrong, noncommercial open source is great, but it just doesn't make sense in some areas. There's no aggressive development cycle, and no real accountability.
I wish people would stop bitching about their obscure browsers not working with this or that...
I completely agree. Only last week I had to listen to the cheek of some idiot saying how I should have put a wheelchair ramp in so he could access my store!
Apples/Oranges. You can install another browser or operating system or use a friend's computer to access your bank website if you need to. It's a feature, not a necessity.
However, the guy in the wheel chair can't borrow someone's legs to access your facility, which could be a necessity (depending on what your facility is).
"And like that
They have a right to not support anything but Internet Explorer, but we have the same right to know about it when making a choice of whether to use their bank. If they don't support a browser I can actually use I'd say I have a right to make an informed choice to instead use one of their competitors who can.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I haven't had much trouble using banking.wellsfargo.com from Konqueror (KDE2). I did have problems registering, but once its registered, it has worked so far. I had to register using IE. But Konq isn't on thier list of supported browsers either
But wouldn't it be better if instead of determining specific browsers if they had a list of supported technologies?
Since I do 95% of my banking online, and use Gentoo Linux on the desktop, it is an essential that my bank in Mozilla compatible. When I was a Bank One they changed some stuff which made their site non Mozilla compatible. I politely sent them an email and asked them to fix it. They did not. So I switched to Wells Fargo where now I enjoy Mozilla compatible online banking. Way to go Wells Fargo! (BTW: Bank One might have fixed this, since it was about 1 year ago.)
DLJDirect -> CSFBDirect -> harrisdirect.com my broker...
If you can keep up with thier constant buyouts and name changing, they were always really responsive. I complained that their navbar had flaky javascript on it that was totally unnecessary, and in a week it was gone. Other than that, they always were very compatible with any browser I wanted to use, which is pretty nice considering it's a pretty complex online trading platform.
firstunion.com....
Sometimes good, sometimes bad... They change their code so often, it's a tossup as to whether your browser will make it past the signin screen. I've mostly had problems logging in, if I can get logged in, things usually work fine. One thing that is bad is if you don't set your browser to auto-accept all cookies, the site will constantly screw your session up, even if you manually accept the cookies. At least it used to. As I said, they change their code a lot.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
My bank (Washington Mutual) supports EVERYTHING that can handle SSL. I fired off a nice note to the webmaster - and it was appreciated. Pat the good people on the back now and then!
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I want them to support standards like HTML, XHTML, CSS and so on.
Then the sites will work with any current or future client technology that also supports those standards.
Nowadays, there is no reason why your site should not be valid
Someone has already made a much better chart of how various Linux browsers do at various banks around the world. Check out the site.
The chart lists 302 banks in 32 countries and indicates whether someone has reported success with Netscape 4, Netscape 6/7, Mozilla, Galeon, Konquerer 2, Konqueror 3, Opera, and Elinks.
Help him fill in the chart if you have info on an unlisted bank or on a browser for a listed bank by e-mailing Evan
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
I use citibank for my online banking and it works just fine with Mozilla. I'm not sure why The Register listed them as a sinner. Their interface is solid and intuitive as far as I'm concerned.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
My bank supports pretty much any browser, as long as it can handle an ssl connection. However, I know that csbc wasn't supporting mozilla about half a year ago, don't know how it is now (probably the same).
And really, there I can't see any reason why some browsers would not be allowed to use the online system. I mean I understand that they might design the site with IE in mind, but why not just say something like "Use whatever you like, that has ssl, but we won't offer technical support to anything but IE" and put one of those ugly "best viewed with Internet Explorer" banners?
Join the elite! Post at score:2! Ghostwheel is online.
I do my regular banking with 5/3rd Bank, and I have credit cards accounts I work with online with MBNA, Providian, Cross Country Bank, and Shell Oil. I know from regular usage that all of them work with IE, Mozilla, Opera, or Phoenix. Maybe I just got lucky :-)
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
"The week before that some black guy complained because I wouldnt serve him - it's my right isnt it?"
I knew someone would bring that up. The difference between this and what browser you use is that your skin color or physical ability usually isn't your choice. Most people don't wake up one day and say "I think I will be disabled today" or "I think I will be a minority race today". You pretty much are or you aren't, and you can't usually change it easily.
The browser you use, on the other hand, is entirely your choice. You do have the ability to use Internet Explorer. (And none of this "I use Linux so I can't use IE" stuff... you chose to use Linux as well.) For the most part, when you switch to a different browser, you are aware that some sites will not work well with that browser.
I code my pages to the XHTML standard. I refuse to support Netscape 4.x because it does not support standards. My pages don't work on Mozilla 1.0 because of a bug in Mozilla 1.0's XHTML rendering. Does that mean I should break my layout because Mozilla 1.0 has a bug, considering Mozilla 1.0 is less than one percent of my readership?
The latest browser stats show that Netscape 4 has 1.2% of the market and that Mozilla 1.x has 0.8% of the market. This means that web developers need to spend more time working with the 94.9% of the population that uses Internet Explorer than the decided minority that uses another browser.
Let's face it -- all browsers have quirks. "Coding to standards" will not always solve the problem (as I mentioned above.) Thus, most web developers code for the 95% of their audience that is on IE first, and then choose to make sites compatible with minority browsers at their discretion. If you spend 50% of your development time working around bugs in Netscape 4.x (which has more market share than either Mozilla 1.x or Opera), is that an effective use of your time? If you "code to standards" and your site still doesn't work in Mozilla or Opera, is troubleshooting the problem an effective use of your time considering that those two browsers count for less than 2% of your audience? Like it or not, the answer is most often "No."
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Just my $.019999:
:)
Bank of America hasn't given me any problems, from Netscape 4 to Mozilla 1.1. I wouldn't necessarily say they are some wonderful bank -- they are a huge corporation and have all the associated pains, but at least they're not making me use Internet Exploder.
I refuse to use IE. If someone requires IE, they typically don't get my business and they usually get a nasty note as well. Same goes for sites that *require* flash, BTW. I only installed flash because of the games it lets me play.
Yeah, I've used First Union for years, and the only nit I have is that at the personal banking login screen, the field length has never displayed properly. It almost makes it worth all the fees associated with a CAP account. Almost.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Navy Federal Credit Union works fine with everything I have ever tried. IE, Kmeleon, Opera (Linux and Win), and whatever version of Mozilla/Netscape RH7.3 comes with and get this... Usable with Lynx on a console. The general bank information like rate calculators, online applications and some of the general info links did not work so well so its a little tricky getting to the account access part but, it works pretty good once logged in to my account. I have not tried the web bill paying portion with all of the browsers, which is handled 3rd party via Checkfree. I do know that Opera and the whatever RH 7.3 comes with but it works with that also. I tried to include some text from a Lynx section but I couldn't get past the lameness filter..
Multiple browser support CAN be done...
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
There's a difference between what's required by law and what would "be nice to have". Sure it's your right to use whatever web browser you want, but don't expect anyone to to start crying because you get an error in Konqueror.
The truth is that when a bank builds an online banking application and they start UAT testing, there will be no mention of Mozillas, Operas and Konquerors. You'll be lucky if it works in NS 4.72+ and IE 5.0.
You honestly think anyone is screaming in board meetings "Good heavens, our application doesn't work in Opera!"
The only reason why some of these applications work in Opera/Mozilla is just by chance that they emulate the popular web browsers.
Live web cams
6/10 to LloydsTSB.
By the way, DiscoverCard.com worked the whole time.
Oh, and my bank ehbt.com works fine. It's a third-party thing from fundsexpress.com FYI.
USAA has excellent browser support. I mailed them a few weeks ago about a rendering problem with Mozilla/Galeon, and it was fixed within a few days. The bug didn't even prohibit use of the site, it just made certain menus not work, so that navigation was more difficult.
Unfortunately, not everyone can become a member; see the URL for more information.
E*Trade bank's website works great in Mozilla. They also pay interest on checking accounts, reimburse you for ATM fees, refill your checks for free, and offer free online bill pay. (All the above requires a min. balance of $5000). Highly recommended!
You're missing the point. The parent is pointing out that due to bugs and badly implemented features, some browsers are mutually exclusive. And when given the choice "90% of the market xor 10% of the market", the answer is obvious.
Gee, I'd rather not kill trees in order to write checks and Mozilla's SSL works just fine for securing the transactions. I save time, postage, trees and gasoline by banking on-line. Plus, I don't have to worry about my cheques being stolen from my mailbox.
When I used to have a "brick and mortar" bank, I'd go for years without interacting with a live person because I used the ATM for most of my transactions and I've had autodeposit of pay checks since the early 80s. In addition to being convenient, my on-line bank's (www.everbank.com) interest pays in the top 5% of banks since they don't have to pay a bunch of tellers and suits to stand around nor pay for physical security since they have no cash.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
my bank, suntrust, is somewhere in between. it leans toward the saintly side because the entire actual online banking system works perfectly on mozilla, but their website itself gives a message saying that browsers of the netscape 6/mozilla family aren't supported (netscape 4.* is supported). i'm not sure why this is.
it seems to me that it would be easier to make the company's website compatible across the board than it would to do the same for the complex system for managing accounts. oh well. i'm a satisfied with it anyway.
"I just want to thank my coach Eric a.k.a. Disco for shattering my reality..."
I have 3 online bank/credit card accounts in the UK. 2 work perfectly well with mozilla (although one does pop up a dialog window stating that the browser is unsupported). The third refuses to work with mozilla. However, getting mozilla to pretend that it is IE6 makes the site work perfectly. I even phoned the customer support line once to ask why this is the case. They didn't have a clue abput what I was wittering on about.
I have one online credit union account in the US. That works perfectly with Mozilla. Unfortunately the service in the real branch is cronically bad. And, I had to pay for books of checks (sic) which I have no intention of ever using. And, the interest is paid at a rate so low that it might as well be zero. And they won't let me open a share dealing account because my credit history isn't good enough (!). Did I mention that I think that in the US, we banking consumers get totally screwed?
Now that I embedded the Apache web server into my mattress I found that I can do all of my banking online.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
I've been using Mozilla with Everbank since about 0.9.6 or so. They don't "officially" support it but it works fine for all of my on-line banking (EFT/bill pay, statement management, etc.). Great interest rates, too. If you're looking for an on-line bank, I highly recommend them.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I have a credit card from AMEX and a checking account at WAMU, both of their online banking solutions have absolutley no problems. AMEX is also nice in their ability to pay bills from a bank account without bothering to have any paper bills (you can tell them to stop sending you paper statements, but I still prefer to receive them).
The first time I used it, I had some weird issues (having to click 3 times to get one through), but since then it's been fine.
This is just nonsense. The only reason there are incompatibilities is because they're using non-standard, proprietary HTML extensions, and they rely too much on stuff like Javascript. If they'd just stick to standards-compliant HTML, they wouldn't have any of these problems. All platforms would be supported, and there would probably be fewer security problems.
They do functionality testing for IE (win32 & mac), Netscape (win32, mac, Linux), and Mozilla (including Linux). Works great. Even newer versions of Konqueror work there.
http://www.fnbomaha.com
Now if they'd just stop charging two bucks for using a non-FNBO ATM - the non-FNBO ATM already charges me $1 - $4, plus FNBO charges another $2 on top of that, complete scammage.
I refuse to net bank , seems to me my bank
(ScotiaBank) and most other banks in Canada
and I assume the US are spending vast sums
of money and time trieing to get me to help
them get rid of their employee's , don't get
me wrong I've got plenty of computers of all
shapes and sizes and have been "online" for
over ten years but to me there is some things
that computers do that can take away from our
society , the local friendly bank lady's will
cash any cheque I put in front of them without
even a look , because they know who I am , and
what else could they do for a living or what
future jobs will they attain because they had
a start as a teller in a bank , we need as many
jobs that pay any wages as can be had , that's
why the economy is such a mess all the money go's
in none comes out !
These banks will learn their lesson with the first ADA lawsuit. Some blind guy will sue them because he can't use the website because it doesn't work with his text reader.
German Banks support an online banking standard called HBCI. Since two weeks ago, GnuCash supports this protocol through the excellent OpenHBCI library. All you German /. readers out there, go get it! A stable release is scheduled for this December.
HBCI basically offers a NEW interface to online banking. No Web server, no Browser, no compatibility issues. HBCI (Home Banking Computer Interface) is a bank-independent standard that defines the communication between an arbitrary finance application and any arbitrary HBCI-capable bank server. Roughly half of the banks in Germany offer home banking access through HBCI. The OpenHBCI library enables programmers of finance applications to seamlessly integrate HBCI functionality into their programs, without having to know anything about HBCI details. HBCI business actions, like for example statement retrieval, bank transfer initiation or issuing of debit notes, can easily be invoked through very few lines of application program code.
cstim
The Bank of Montreal's website does not block browsers. They do offically recommend IE or NS, but they don't force anything. Most functions work all right in Opera 6, but anything that uses a popup doesn't work (no windows comes up, page goes blank). The way I see it, I usually only check my balance, so I would rather use the more secure Opera and lose a little bit of functionality than use IE and be hit by one of the numerous security flaws.
What I find ironic: after I log out, the bank site tells me to close all windows and clear cache, history, etc. In Opera, it's a simple File-->Delete Private Data-->OK. It takes about 5 steps to completely clear IE. When will they ever learn...
Their on line section has alway sworked for me in Mozilla, Netscape and Konqueror. I've never tried it in Opera -- not a big Opera fan.
Plus, I don't get charged to use ATM's owned by them and about a dozen other banks.
Every one was praising Wells Fargo, but until recently Iowa had a law on the books that made it illegal to charge for ATM usage. We could use our cards in any ATM in the state, no matter who owned them, with no charge. Wells Fargo sued to have the law repealed and won. So I'm not a big Wells Fargo fan.
My bank here in Germany uses a secure Java applet (https and ssl) which runs perfectly in my Konqueror 3.0.4. It runs even better than in Mozilla, where there are some display glitches, due to some font issues.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
"Can you explain to me exactly which advanced functionality your bank need to use to make their site work that hasn't been there since HTML 1.0?"
Have you not read the HTML standards? HTML 1.0 didn't support anything but basic hyperlinking and the <PRE> tag. See here for more details. HTML 1.0 didn't support tables, forms, frames, etc. (Warning: Link is extremely dated.)
As I said earlier, I code my pages to the XHTML 1.0 standard. That means that Netscape 4.x won't render them properly, as Netscape 4 relies on a number of non-standard HTML tags and attributes (marginwidth, marginheight, height, etc.) In fact, Netscape 4 is so buggy when it comes to CSS that there are whole pages dedicated to its bugginess. (Search Google for more.)
Moral of the story: Code your pages to standards, and make sure they work in IE 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0. Beyond that, it's up to each individual web developer.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
My boss closed his Suntrust account because servie at the branches was horrid.
What gets me about suntrust is this message.
From the page:
Your browser is not compatible with www.suntrust.com at this time.
If you are using Netscape 6.x, Netscape has chosen to alter their communication standards resulting in this incompatibility. In the interim, we recommend you use one of the following browsers:
* Netscape (4.08 - 4.77)
* Internet Explorer (4.0 or higher)
* AOL (4.0 or higher)
If you are using AOL or Internet Explorer 4.5 on a Macintosh, we recommend you download and utilize Internet Explorer 5.0 to optimize your experience on our site.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-382-3232.
What exactly has netscape altered that messes with http? Nothing that I can think of. Sounds like an excuse to do shitty work. Probably how they explained it to the people who commisioned the webwork anyway.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Personally I don't complain, I just switch banks. There are plenty of banks eager for my business, and I have used online banking from several of them without problems.
As for losing "ridiculous amounts of functionality" I don't see what you mean. Online banking is pretty straightforward. I want to be able to see my transactions (a simple table), pay my bills online (a handful of simple forms), transfer funds (again, a handful of simple forms), and download my transactions into my accounting software. None of this is rocket science, and all of it can be done use bog-standard HTML and Javascript. My experience with most web pages that reject Galeon or Mozilla actually do work if you fudge your user agent.
I do remember a brief period when I had problems with Mozilla (and had to use IE), but that seems to be more because they are constantly tinkering with their online banking system rather than a plan to exclude a browser (the site is constantly being changed and for the most part improved).
Hey, the online banking site even runs on WebObjects from Apple, so I guess they believe in alternatives. *g*
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Any examples of the "ridiclous" (sic) functionality to be lost by adhering to standards? Or what customers are demanding of banks?
It only takes one to make most people care, their own bank. Other people just don't like to see banks get taken advantage of by software vendors.
Yes I do know that. That's why there are published standards. If you can say that your site meets standards then all standards meeting browsers are supported. It's just that simple, and QA can sign off. Good companies work that way, officially. It's companies that don't work that way that will lose your money for you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I wasn't able to use Galeon with Citibank a couple months ago. But I called and complained, and now it works just fine.
And they say you can't fight city hall...
Unix: Where
Boeing Employees Credit Union. They actually force you to a "Sorry, your browser is not compatible" page if you even try to access their main site (no signin, nothing that would require a password) with a browser that they don't approve of.
And, of course, they approve of MSIE. Ironically enough, they don't approve of all versions of Nutscape. I think they reject you if you try to use 4.76 or higher.
Oddly enough, I've had limited success using Opera, set up to reply as if it were MSIE 5.0. I get through the encrypted signin, but I have trouble getting the Javascript-based controls to work after that point.
Anyway, although I've asked them many times to work support in for alternative browsers, BECU claims they need to stick with where they are for "security reasons."
Meadow muffins! I think, like a goodly chunk of the rest of Boeing, they're just in bed with the Redmond Empire, and their site is written to Bill's Book of (Broken) Standards.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
"What about Opera masquerading as IE or netscape?"
:)
It doesn't really work. US Bank pulled a similar stunt with regard to their browsers. I had to use IE to get into my account, and that bothered me.
Here is what I did: I sent them a polite e-mail explaining that I work between Linux and Windows and the common browser (I use) between them is Opera. It is a well respected browser and I find it a bit painful to move to another browser just to use their site. They sent me an e-mail back saying they were getting a lot of requests like that and that they were looking into fixing it.
And they did. I can now use Opera at US Bank and all I get is a warning saying "this isn't a recommended browser, so it's yo fault." Heh.
So my advice to anybody who wants to contact their bank about this: Be polite. Don't make it sound like it's the end of the world. Don't make it sound like they're evil or stupid. Just politely explain your situation. You may or may not change any minds anywhere, but I guarantee you that if you get shitty with them you won't be heard.
The answer to the issue is quite simple: Banks list their recommended browsers to avoid headaches. Yes, Lynx with SSL support may work well enough, but who wants to go chasing down the an obscure bug that only affects 0.00001% of their users?
Personally, my credit union has no issue with what browser I use; they had a XHTML issue which I argued with the Mozilla people they should allow (because I thought XHTML was grey when it came to someone does <SELECT><OPTION ... />Option_Display</SELECT>), but this resolved itself when the credit union changed their HTML header. I used to be able to get into Ing Direct with Konqueror, although I am presently having issues with logins (I do not know if it is a Konqueror or ING bug; changing browser idents does not fix the issue). First Union/Wachovia historically has not given me issues, although I no longer have an account there. But all my personal banking can be done through Netscape for Linux without issues.
For an example of a system which dicates browsers strictly, I name the brokerage Scottrade. They say you can *only* use Internet Explorer or Netscape (but fortunately, do not name an operating system). Why do they do this? Well, if you read their terms of service, they specifically name a number of programs that you cannot use, which gather quotes, attempt to place stock trades automatically, etc. Here, there is a clear and valid danger should someone use a malicious client to do trades, etc.
While I have not asked, I'm certain that if you told a company like Scottrade that other *legitamite* web browsers existed, that they might allow them. I think many banks/brokerages/etc. just specify specific browsers because they [1] don't want people calling them about bugs while using XXXX (my transfer didn't go through, and browser Y said it did!) and [2] want the extra legal leg to stand on should someone attempt to compromise their system with an alternative Internet client. Of course, malicious clients can act like they are legitamite ones, but the more legal room the banks think they have, the better they feel about being online.
"some browsers are mutually exclusive"
Sorry, but only when you insist on using certain features. Don't use them and you are OK.
It's trivial to make web pages that works for all browser - if you are a real web developer!
Sadly, there are so many wannabes who have not a clue...
Just saying it like it are.
It seems that banks are getting the message that 10% or so of their clients are inconvinenced by IE only software. My bank now bosts a big long compatibiltiy table on their website. They might be tired of the constant rework required to make the average IE only site stay working. No one here would think that an IE 4.x only site would really work today do they?
Be nice and drop your bank a little letter when you run into this kind of thing. Let them know that you don't own M$ software and can't use their online banking feature. It's much like M$ Word forms, it's going to bother you just once but 10% or more of their potential online customers walking through their front door are going to bother them all day long. The whole point of putting these things up is to prevent that walkin and printed forms.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Often I've been in a situation where I hear "there are things other than IE?" and "I use IE, I don't care to think about anything else" from the people calling the shots as far as the specs & what will be paid for.
Then we have to go back to them with our site stats and say "are you willing to piss off X percent of users?" Luckily they wake up then. Lately, we've reversed the position - we tell them what browsers we're supporting, and why we cut off specific support for some browser versions where we do.
There are a lot of "Internet users" who don't have any concept of the Internet beyond IE, and even scarier, they're now the ones deciding how sites should be built.
It did not work in:
Some functionality was available without the menu - checking balances and getting a transaction history.
Then they ditched the Java menu in favor of plain HTML links.
Now it looks like they've switched back to Java, and Mozilla for Windows doesn't work anymore. I'm not gonna try logging on with Internet Explorer from work.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"The only thing the banks are interested in is your money, as long as they think you'll keep them there they don't care about you at all."
There's a disconnect there you may not be aware of: The tech support guy doesn't give a flying fart if the customer leaves or not. In other words, you got lucky.
I was surprised to see one of my banks, ABN AMRO, listed as "no plans to support Opera". For those that don't know it, it is one of the bigger banks in the Netherlands, and it is not particularly know for getting electronic banking right.
I tried Galeon and regular Mozilla and found it just worked. No ActiveX crap, light (and more importantly: sensible) usage of JavaScript, and a really well thought out security model. They really seem to have had browser independance in mind when designing the software.
I'd be darn surprised if Opera doesn't just work.
Of course, The Reg is just a journalism site, so I can forgive them for not investigating it themselves, but still, this is not the right picture.
I even made a point of dropping my bank a note that they got it right, and should keep the team that built the site. I even got an answer from a sentient being on my comment!
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Well, look at it this way. Say a big nationwide bank decides to drop its clearance by 5" for drive up tellers on all new branches being built now and in the future. Well, problem is that there are a couple brands of big SUVs that will not fit under the clearance. Fortunately, those customers that own such vehicles only compromise about ~.5% of their customer base and the bank will save millions in construction costs every year. Sucks for those car owners. Guess they have to walk into the building with much shorter hours because they CHOSE to buy those big gas-guzzling SUVs.
I don't think so. People would go apeshit or for something like that or similar. Just because it is your choice doesn't necessarily make it any different.
Ditto here, had SFNB, they were great, but then RBC wanted outrageous fees, even charging me not only the now-extra monthly fee merely to have an account, but an extra monthly fee (I think $12 or so!) to pay bills online. I oculd not believe that they would charge me $12 to NOT write paper checks. Found Netbank and have been 90% happy ever since. I do wish they would send email status updates of received snail mail deposits (received, cleared).
Infuriate left and right
Of note, they were one of the first big corporations to use a java-based enterprise application server, using netscape enterprise, as you could figure out from the very telling AppLogic+FooAppLogic URLs. They upgraded a couple of years ago and I think they're using the upgraded iPlanet now.
Anyway. I am glad that my bank does not use a microsoft "solution" for any mission-critical application. That would make me *very* nervous to say the least. It looks like they've got some geeks who know their shit running their apps. Even the markup/front-end HTML/JavaScript throughout their site looks good to me (and i would know, i like to pick apart this kind of shit) while they've managed to keep the user interface fairly simple and intuitive.
Anyway. go bofa.
On an unrelated and fairly inconsequential note: i just refinanced my home loan and my lender is now bofa. i work for a fairly large corporation whose bank is bofa. my personal bank is bofa. so every two weeks, my company sends a direct deposit from their bofa account to my bofa checking account, a good chunk of which goes rite back to yet another bofa mortgage account. i'm bofa's bitch :o you'd think they'd give me free interest checking?
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
My current bank is the Halifax
:)
:) so I left them. I wrote them and told them why as well. They have lost the ~300 UKP a year they made from running my account.
(a figure half-remembered from a recentish survey about average profit per bank customer in the UK)
Their site is fast, HTML only as far as I can tell (little JS, NO Java, NO Flash etc) and it's bloody great. Works fine on Moz, Phoenix, Konq, NN4..and IE
They have to do a little more server-side than if it was some massive bloated 'application' that allowed you to, say, add a new regular payment_and_then add money to that payment_and_then_do_something_else_ (which is why so many of the others seem to do it so wrong, as they want to do it all so 'seamlessly client side') but hell... it just works
My previous bank was the Woolwich who, after years of not doing anything online, suddenly started closing branches, moving everything over the phone banking and Net banking. This is where the problem comes if your almost-essential-to-users-lives website doesn't work properly. I can't NOT use my bank's website, or only do my banking in work hours/ on a Windows machine.
ANything beyond the login page of their site, needless to say, was unusable on anything other than IE4 & 5 (not even IE6!) Terrible hierarchical menus in Java, JS used to calculate balances, show recent transactions, etc. Half the time I was staring at a screen that said 'you have a balance of "undefined call to variable bar...."'
The Woolwich didn't get it right AT ALL - I would call and report it as a fault, they'd panic, then eventually realise I wasn't running IE, and their support people would tell me all sorts of rubbish about 'Mozilla isn't secure' or 'Java is supposed to do that' (crash
A bank's website - or an ecommerce website - is different to, say, a whizz-bang movie release website that needs Flash, or a vanity site that asks for plugin foo - they have websites to keep customers, and allow them to save costs. If even the 2% of people quoted elsewhere in this thread can't use their service - hell, they'll just move.
End of story. IF you have a serious, customer facing website that you are relying on to help you cut costs and increase efficiency, it is NOT an option to restrict what software the site runs on. Just ask amazon.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
I'm stunned the word "password" is even in the dictionary of a banking website designer.
I've got two banks. One, the Postbank, was a pioneer in electronic banking eons ago. Their first implementation used a dialup system with one time passwords (you get a printed sheet with codes, and you have to enter one per transaction). Read-only access to your data sits behind username and password (and both are enforced to be unrelated to your name or account number).
My other bank flailed for years, and required authentication that was strong but entirely unusable. They now have a system where you get a card reader, which requires you to insert your card; the reader does a local validation of your PIN code, when it matches, the device handles challenge/response keys.
The security of the latter device is as strong as the security of the embedded chip on the card. I'm pretty sure it can be broken given time and effort, but it sure as heck beats any system where the user has to dream up a password. At least, this system requires possession of your bank card, because hypothetical hacks on the card do require you to have the physical card in your possession.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Really? Seems like a malevolent JS file could easily trick an unsuspecting user into posting their information to another system. Sure, the browser might warn them, but a lot of users wouldn't even think twice.
My online banking with Wells Fargo worked just fine in Mozilla...as does my new account with Commercial Federal Bank. (they might be local to Denver, not sure)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Well I use the Royal Bank of Canada and American Express and they not only both work great with Mozilla but RBC has one of the best online banking sites I have ever used, it even accesses my other accounts from other banks and gives me everything on one page!
ING Direct on the other hand has one of the worst web pages I've ever seen or used. It's like it was done by a preschooler with big huge orange buttons and dumb phrases at the top. It works with all browsers though so I guess I shouldn't complain.
-- iCEBaLM
Whoever complains about his bank online services not working with his browser is free to switch. And I really can't understand how they can successfully break compatibility with mozilla/konqueror which are working on uglysh and complicated sites. Banking is about numbers formatted in tables, CSS and some compliant JS will do it, as for my bank using IBM made software.
have you been defaced today?
When I first joined UC their homepage didn't work with Moz - some bolloxy DHTML menus. I complained, and I assume others did too, and they fixed it when they redesigned their site.
However they just recently redid their online banking site which used to work fine, and now it doesn't work with Moz. I think it's because their menu JS file does browser detection and refuses to work with `non-supported browsers' whatever they are.
Whoever did the new site did a horrid job - goddam DHTML popup windows everywhere, then click for a DHTML menu, and each of those menu items has a rollover DHTML popup.
And I've seen those sorts of popups before, and I really hope its not the same developer, because he used to code using variables called Fred and Barney and Pebbles.
except you're not a retard.
Oh wait, you are...
CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) had some issues for a long time and I was quick to blame it as being their fault. However, after many months, someone commented on the CIBC bug in Bugzilla that it was working in a newer version of Mozilla. So, as it turned out, it was actually a problem in Mozilla's SSL support, not in CIBC's site. Go figure.
And for everyone who is complaining that Mozilla can't change the useragent... Yes it can. You can either set the following pref in your prefs.js:
user_pref("general.useragent.override", "fake agent string");
Or install the following toolbar widget thing to change it on the fly (very handy!):
UABar
Random and weird software I've written.
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...
Are Credit Unions better? Both of mine have been great--OU FCU (forget the URI) explicitly supports all browsers with 128-bit or higher encryption, on any OS, and Commonwealth One shows you a scary warning indicating that it's not "officially" supported, but everything works great on every browser I've tried (including even the earliest Mozilla milestones on Linux).
Jouster
that's York County Federal Credit Union ... tiny little CU back in my hometown in Maine, but they've got really cool online banking software that runs great in mozilla, konq, ie, etc ... my only problem is that sometimes the toolbar renders strangely in mozilla, and i have to force the frame to scroll down to use it ... other than that it all works great ... it's one of the main reaons i've kept this bank, even though i now live in Boston ... well, that and its services are free :) ... and the home-town service blows the doors off of anything you'd get from Fleet ...
09
I agree.
;) ...so I've never gone to the page of which you speak.
Even before the merger with TD, Canada Trust has always had a great banking site.
I also have never encountered any problems with using almost any browser with their site (and never any problems with the OS?!? as other posters have stated their banks)
As for cheques...since I use TC Canadatrust Easyweb (and before that the telephone version Easyline), I haven't written a cheque in 3 years
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
It's not a disability. It's your own stupid choice. You're just as welcome to use a standard browser than, say, NS 2.01.
www.nordea.dk
..hopefully sooner or later they will get tired of me calling on a weekly basis to ask when I can retire my ns4.7x browser.
a large bank with interests all over scandinavia.
I could use their netbank with mozilla1.0 and netscape at comparing version,and java2 for win32.
But when using my own fbsd box with mozilla1.0 and java2 I was denied access. I called their support saying they didn't support support linux - although he had heard it should work with netscape4.7x - yes it did.
but still, they seem to be of the belief that windows is safer than linux/fbsd because it is proprietary.
I think we have to draw the line somewhere.
Banking sites should right now be coded to support the following browsers:
Internet Explorer 5.0 and later (Windows and Mac)
Netscape Communicator 4.0 to 4.79 (Windows, Mac and Linux)
Mozilla 1.1 and later (Windows, Mac, and Linux, including the commercial Netscape 7.0 version)
Just these three browsers pretty much covers almost everybody on the Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms.
Why these three browsers? IE has most of the users; Netscape Communicator 4.x has a huge base of legacy users; and Mozilla 1.1 and newer has become an emerging third de facto standard, especially since most of the latest commercial Linux distros include Mozilla 1.1.
Other programs like Opera and Konqueror have too small a user base and trying to trying to support beyond the three browsers I mentioned becomes a major webmaster maintainance nightmare.
All my online banking via PFCU works for me in Mozilla (Windows & Linux). Site claims "optimized to work best with Microsoft Internet Explorer", but includes a Netscape icon. I'm guessing they need to encourage browsers that support reasonable encryption, and are choosing to keep it simple.
Note the dreaded browser detection code. Seems to pass Opera, Moz, IE & WebTV.
(indentations made ugly to pass Lameness Filter)I'm wondering if Credit Unions are more prone to pass the non-IE test because they have less $$ for flashy sites, and keep things simpler.
I am not aware of any NZ bank that fails to work with Mozilla. Victoria University's computer department works almost exclusively with NetBSD boxes running KDE3, and I have frequently accessed my National Bank account with Mozilla, none of my friends have problems with different banks either.
:)
Pitty NZ fees are high (compared to the UK), but since I have a tertiary account I have no fees
--sitharus
The entire letter I sent them is too long to post here, but suffice to say, I gave them an earful. It can be found in the appropriate bugzilla bug:
5 3
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=898
I've been free of Crapital One since June now, but I still haven't given up the crusade against them -- here is my Epinions review -- I encourage all of you to do the same:
http://www.epinions.com/content_78150143620
I disagree with the liability argument. I don't think banks could be held liable unless they were just genuinely negligent in putting information out there that could be trivially compromised.
Where I do side with banks, though, is the fact that by "certifying" their site's functionality and security with browser XYZ, I as a customer can be reasonably confident that when I open up my account in a supported browser, I won't be able to do something stupid so as to compromise my account information, and the browser doesn't easily give that information up to someone it shouldn't.
Coding to standards is one thing, but not every "standards-following" browser is either reliable or entirely standards-compliant. If there are known issues or caveats, I appreciate the fact that my bank is making the effort to find those.
On the flip side, it might be a good idea on all sides if they still allowed me to access my information, but only by acknowledging the fact that MyBrowser/1.0 may be insecure or break.
US Bank works with Mozilla 1.0 or 1.1 as long you you actually stay on US Bank's site.
My only complaint is as follows:
their outsourcer for reordering cheques doesn't support Mozilla, so I actually have to use the *gasp* telephone for that. But hey, I don't use that many cheques, so that is a pretty minor concern.
I will warn though that I could not get Konqueror to work at all with US Bank. For some reason, it always gets the error about having javascript not enabled despite the fact that javascript works just fine... I would assume that Galeon would work just fine.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Gotta love this "security" claim. George Carlin had this right in '99, when he said that Americans (and British, and most other peoples) are willing to trade their convenience and their rights for 'security'.
;)
Let's get this straight. They want IE, a browser *notorious* for the ability to be modified remotely without consent. Like the fucking Xupiter DLL I still haven't excised from my mom's system.. I had to re-install Windows to fix it. (I know that's the generic repair method. )
Contrast Mozilla, where you can prevent pop-ups, pop-unders, mindow resizing, or any other surreptitious content from getting through.
Hell, what about w3m, for God's sake!? That's my fav browser.. fast as hell and dog-ugly. Reminds me of myself.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I've had similar issues with PC - so after talking with them, I have the following info:
Option 1: Keep your PC account, ask to 'increase' the amount they automatically clear. If you've got an account in good standing, getting your $200 changed to $500 can be done over the phone. I asked about higher than that and PC apparently does this automatically over time - I'm a fairly new account and mine was due to be upped. If your account has overdraft protection, you also have access to $400 overdraft (so $200 + 400, or in my case now $500 + $400 available for larger cheques).
Option 2: Find another bank that clears the full amount of your cheque immediately. Put your cheques in that account, then send a request to PC for a withdrawl from that account - from what I'm told, it work similar to a debit card purchase in that it is immediately cleared.
Other options: do a wire transfer between bank accounts (costs money, takes a little time), set up auto-deposited payroll cheques at PC, etc.
PC has been doing a great job keeping competitive and I'll gladly keep my business there. I've been using IE/Opera/Mozilla with their site and have no complaints.
You can set the _JavaScript_ UserAgent string in Mozilla. On one site that requires Windows browsers, this string works for me:
user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.0 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20020326 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows MUSTDIE)");
is NetBank and it works well in Mozilla and Konq. It's been a great bank to work with, especially when I live overseas and don't have a chance to go to the "local" teller.
That's the disadvantage of Wells Fargo, et al. There are some critical services that require you to go to some local branch. Netbank doesn't and everything is quite secure.
No, I don't work for them, just informing all what it's like for me.
--
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98) Opera 6.05 [en]
The Opera string is still there. So, for the website designer who only writes for a single browser, simply scanning the user-agent for "Opera" will keep out non-approved browsers. A full header rewriting proxy, such as Proximtron, is needed in this case.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
My bank Nordea is one of the biggest banks in the Nordic countries , and their web bank is quite good. They only say what standards your browser has to comply with, and really, that's how it should be. Then they keep download links for IE, Opera and Netscape. I called them up once with a Konqi problem and the person said "sorry, I don't have Konqi here, because where only running Linux on an old Pentium box for testing, and it's too slow for that, but I'll check when I get home." The server itself is written in Java, it wasn't clear to me if it is running on Tomcat, but I think so.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I agree, full Kudos to Nationwide which I use quite happily with Mozilla and Konqueror on Linux. Try using Mac OS x (10.0.1) and the Default IE install won't ever let you past the login screen, no error messages appear, you just never get in to the site. Netscape 6 and Mozilla 1.0 both work fine on the Mac though, perhaps we should have a special category for sites which are more friendly to open source sites than closed browsers :-).
I have to take issue with their description of Abbey National as a sinner. I have been using it with Netscape and now Mozilla on Linux for well over a year and have never had any problems with it. Well, perhaps one problem, there does seem to be a bug which always renders the amount of money in my current account as a small or negative number, if they counld fix this I would recomment them even more strongly.
Why support _any_ website that doesn't accept multiple browsers? I don't even buy products from companies that don't play well with open-source or standards compliant software (either their websites, interfacing software, etc).
By faking your header you're only helping them to make the argument to the higer-ups/collars that they don't need multiple browser support. My advice is to find a competing "site" (I'm not exactly sure what it is or what service they provide you). Making purchasing decisions (aka Boycotting) based on how they choose to conduct business is the only way we (consumers) can enforce good business practices. The only place they'll notice it is in their wallets. My government(USA) has demonstrated its complete lack of integrity in regard to big business, campaign contributions, lobbying.
In regards to banking, my bank (Merrill Lynch) is IIS (it's slower than dirt), but I'm staying with them because,
they're moving virtually _all_ of their systems over to Linux. And I like that.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
The static ones are easy, if you have the URL - which I assume you have if it's your pages.
The dynamic ones should be fairly trivial to convert into static ones (i.e. save HTML to disc as well as send back to client) in some sort of debug mode, with at least all common methods for creating dynamic web pages I know of (PHP, ASP, JSP, CGI modules to PERL/Python &c). Now that you have static pages, see above.
It takes a couple of lines of code in your web code, plus a small script that generates URLs for the validator. What more do you need?
May we live long and die out
Well I hope they disable ICMP
Disabling ICMP on the actual webserver box, sure. But this box should, IMO, be behind a firewall, ensuring that only the specified ports are forwarded to the webserver.
ICMP should be enabled on the firewall.
Banks dont need crackers mapping there network with NMAP.
nmap works just fine without receiving ICMP requests; it's just one more flag to specify to nmap telling it not to ping the host first. Thinking otherwise is giving yourself a false sense of security.
Since they have ICMP disabled that means they have a compident security officer.
Not necessarily true. It means they heard somewhere that "blocking ICMP requests makes you more secure", which by itself is not true at all. The only thing this gives you is a tiny bit of protection against a very specific type of DOS attack (ping flooding etc).
I hope you don't judge the competancy of an admin by something as simple as this... I know an admin who blocks ICMP, runs a firewall, but was rooted because he ran an unpatched wu-ftpd open to the world. Was he competant? I mean, he did block ICMP requests after all...
You certainly can disable ICMP ping/trace requests *without* disabling ICMP Fragmentation Needed and other requests, thus remaining within accepted standards, if you're worried about being ping-flooded. Blocking ICMP all together goes against commonly accepted standards, and does not make you more secure. I'm sorry if this goes against something you heard or read somewhere...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
1) $ onsgmls -v -s -E 2 http://yourwebsite.com. There are many validators for SGML and XML out there.
2) You really don't know much about programming. A program is a way of automating repetitive tasks. For example, the production of valid web pages based on some changing data might be a good example of a program.
All of this is, I am pretty sure, well known if not self evident... I can't decide if you are -1 Troll or +1 Funny. Certainly it is the funniest posting I have read in a while.
It's worked with every release of Mozilla for OS X from 1.0 on (discounting the bugs that Mo had with just about everything, of course).
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
But let us remember that nothing is air-tight
Yes, I know.
banks rely upon the good nature of their clients
I don't think so. For what it's worth, most banks in the Netherlands do not send checkbooks by e-mail anymore.
massive anti-fraud measures
Snicker. Those come into action long after the fraud has been committed. Dozens of teenagers have criminal records now because they assisted criminals in siphoning off money using stolen checks. The banks don't care; they absorb the losses in the unlikely even the customer can prove that the withdrawal was fraudulent, and start worrying only when national television starts camping outside their offices.
Banks over here realize that once criminals find a way to steal even small amounts of cash using electronic banking, users will lose trust in the system and will resort to more expensive ways of effecting funds transfers (which entail more risk, by the way, but the user perception is different).
Just an example of how petty thieves cause major headaches to banks: criminals would fish completed transfer forms from the banks mailbox, change the amount and the account number, and stuff the transfers back in the banks mailbox. No huge amounts of money were stolen, most of the fall guys were apprehended, but the customer response was such that almost all bank fronts were replaced to include fish proof mailboxes.
Sure, credit cards are less safe than Internet Banking, but the banks have a huge interest in securing Internet Banking and avoiding all security incidents, because the customers rack up huge costs which the banks can't recover if they fall back to paper funds transfers.
Plain text passwords are a disaster waiting to happen. Not just in the banking world.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Capital One is one of the worst violators. Mozilla will not work even after changing the user agent. In fact, it appears they are just deliberately blocking Mozilla from working and refuse to stop. Here's the discussion of the bug at mozilla.org
On the internet, no one knows you're a frog.
You can't use the validator in automated test suites. I want some *Linux* based *command-line* tools. Where can I download it?
Perl and LWP could submit your source. I believe that you can use Perl from a Linux command line.
There are several standalone html validators; just do a Google.
The link I gave is good as the webmaster won't need to download anything to see the results. And it is from the oficial web standards people.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
You can't use the validator is you're required to log in to access certain pages. Even if you could give the validator your account information to log in, would you?
I wouldn't, no.
Also, this validator requires you to put your site live in order to validate it. There's no way I'm testing my site live. There's a Windows version of the validator, but I'm not buying a version that requires me to switch to Windows to do validation.
You can upload files; save the non-live site to a file and upload it.
As was pointed out elsewhere, we need an independent open source command line w3 validator. With such a validator, you could make w3 validation a part of your unit test suite and avoid this problem.
Do a google. Or try sourceforge, or freshmeat. I think someone on uk.comp.os.linux said he used something with tidy in its name, check google groups for the last week or so.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!