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Online Banking And Browser Support

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-credit-union-respects-mozilla dept.

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?"

18 of 598 comments (clear)

  1. for the poll by gripdamage · · Score: 5, Funny

    My bank isn't online yet you insensitive clod.

  2. Mozilla Credit Union by DeadBugs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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/
    1. Re:Mozilla Credit Union by ender81b · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Good for yours, I found out my bank - a fairly large statewide bank - has iffy support across the board. While nearly everything can log in (as long as it supports 128 bit encryption which is a *Good Thing*) various functions don't work. I contacted the people about this and they said they would talk to the vendor soon about it. Well 6 months later I got tired of waiting and took a look at the code myself.

      What was happening was they where using javascript for the pull down menu's that was only set to recognize MSIE 5/6 and Netscape 4/6. Note - this script would work in about everything I tested it in (opera, moz) but it was just set to only work if it detected those browser's strings. I sent them the fixed .js file that would work for everything but, of course, they declined to use it.

      Sigh. Not much I can do about it anymore - besides set opera to identify itself as MSIE 5.0 but that doesn't help with mozilla.

    2. Re:Mozilla Credit Union by dizco · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sigh. Not much I can do about it anymore

      You could find another bank.. they do exist.

      --Sean

  3. Wells Fargo by megaversal · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!
  4. Attribution of blame. by FyRE666 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:Attribution of blame. by Stradivarius · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think it's fair to place the blame entirely on "lazy developers".

      As I see it, there are two possibilities when a bank site doesn't work with non-IE browsers:

      1. The bank wanted a solution that would work with all browsers, but the developer cut corners and didn't provide it.
      2. The bank didn't care.

      For #2, I think it's safe to say the blame lies solely with the bank.

      For #1, it seems the blame is largely with the developers. After all, the site's ability to work with all browsers was either explicitly stated, or it was implied. There's no reason an ordinary person would think "I want you to build my website" would be interpreted as "I want you to build a website that only some of my customers can use". Unless the developer explicitly states that their proposal is limited to IE, the expectation is (rightfully) that there is no such limitation.

      At the same time, though, any organization contracting out such a significant job has a responsibility to exercise some due diligence. Especially a financial organization, due to the need for security. They ought to do enough research (either themselves, or hire a consultant) to know how to discriminate between competing bids. And they ought to ensure before accepting a bid that the developer truly understands their requirements, and that all requirements are in the contract. If they do all that, and the developer doesn't provide everything they said they would, that's breach of contract. If the bank doesn't do its due diligence, then it has to accept a share of the blame for having a half-assed website.

      FWIW, Bank of America's site seems to work fine with Mozilla.

  5. Re:wamu by sfe_software · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  6. Things will only change if... by bLanark · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!
    1. Re:Things will only change if... by Dolly_Llama · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Forget the webmaster, write the suits a letter about how their site is out of W3 compliance, even better raise some IE security issues.

      --

      Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan

    2. Re:Things will only change if... by PhotoGuy · · Score: 5, Funny
      I *always* complain if I have the time

      You must be fun at a parties.

      The world needs more people like you :-)

      Seriously, though, one thing I wished more people did, was at least do the converse as well, and write a letter letting a company know when you think they've done something *right*. It's almost unheard of; people often intend to, but never get around to it, unlike letters of complaint.

      --
      Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
  7. Re:Online banking is a stupid idea by Whatsthiswhatsthis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. These articles proliferate the problem by MobyDisk · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The article says:
    Linux users, or just people who prefer alternative browsers (such as Opera)

    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

  9. Re:Who cares what they say they support? by dimator · · Score: 5, Informative

    Might be useful: user-agent masquerading in a simple to use toolbar for mozilla

    --
    python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
  10. Re:Can't support everything by reaper20 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have to pick the biggest browsers and target their software for them.

    You don't write web pages for browsers, you write web pages to standards.

    It's not too hard, for inspiration, Wired News recently switched to full xhtml compliance with css. Their stuff works fine in any compliant browser.

    People who complain about "I try to write to standards but all the browsers are broken", or "you can only do $feature on a certain browser" are lazy. That was a valid excuse 5 years ago, but not today. It is easier to write the stuff compliant to begin with than play around with stupid browser detection and NS4.x workarounds.

  11. Re:Can't support everything by vidarh · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Thats just bullshit. My experience with various online banks is that the ones that are the most usable also work flawlessly across browsers. Why? Because they don't try to make their sites use all kind of fancy crap that just slow down and complicate things. When I log on to my online bank, I want to do one of checking my balance, looking at statements, or paying bills. Why would you need to use anything beyond basic HTML for that? Perhaps there are a few functions you want to use basic Javascript for, fine, but nothing that can't be trivially done so that it'll work even in Netscape 4, and nothing that should prevent the site from working with Javascript off.

    I currently use Barclays (UK), and their site demonstrate my point well. It works. It's reasonably fast (and when it isn't, it's because their system is overloaded, not because they're trying to push hundreds of kb's of crap to my browser), and it works flawlessly even with Lynx (thought their pages look like crap, since they don't use empty alt tags to hide all their pixel gifs...

    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?

  12. I _don't_ want them to support Moz, Opera, Konq... by Jack+Hughes · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...Because that is surely missing the point.

    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

  13. Re:Can't support everything by vidarh · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This is a ridiculous argument. The bank has no way (or right) to control how the user secures his or hers machine, so why do they care about the browser? The user can have "HackMeProxy 1.0" installed, that intercept all IP traffic and post it to Usenet for what the bank knows, and it might be what the user wants. Face it, the bank has NO WAY of ensuring security by dictating browser type.

    And if they do care about the browser, all logic would dictate that they shouldn't support IE, given the security track record IE has.

    Fact is, this is entirely laziness and incompetence from the banks technical departments.

    In the end though, the incompetent banks will lose out - I've already cancelled one bank account due to a ridiculously bad online bank (a 1.5MB java applet that required write access to your hard disk to write an encrypted profile that you needed to move around to any machine you wanted to access their bank from, which in itself made it useless to me, as the reason I use online banking is to be able to do my banking from anywhere I please - add to that that the applet had severe problems on anything but Windows...). While my account on it's own only accounted for a few hundred dollars a year in lost revenue for them, I'm sure I'm not the first and won't be the last they lose.