Martin ©¿©¬ @mandeREMOVETHIS.plus.com wrote in
I like FF and want to use it but FF won't let me make Bank transfers
Anyone else having this prob? Is it something to do with Java?
Had to revert to IE to get the transfers to work
Martin
©¿©¬
This is an old thread, but I thought I might be able to shed some light
on this.
I used to work for a bank, in the IT department, and I worked on the
secure banking website.
Banking isn't like other websites, it has to be completely secure. Any
potential leaks and everyone will lose faith in the bank and go somewhere
else. You also have to take into account every possible stupid situation
any user may encounter. "Gee I clicked back and refresh and now I
transferred $200 instead of $100, that's not what I wanted." That kind of
thing could actually lead to a lawsuit.
So in addition to just serving up the HTML pages, you have to have some
nifty JavaScript going on to do things like make sure you time out after
a certain number of minutes, or to verify that the things you're entering
in to the form fields are valid.
In order to remain competitive, your banking site also has to have the
latest and greatest features, so it's always a race, and there's never
enough time to do everything, so some things have to get cut - like
support for other browsers.
Again, since security is such a high priority, you have to make sure that
anything you haven't tested won't be allowed, like alternate browsers.
I'm sure once FireFox/Mozilla reaches critical mass, it will be
supported.
Also, both Mozilla and FireFox are considered "Technology Previews" and
the developers don't consider them to be mature and stable products.
Yes IE is less secure, though that could be simply because they present
the largest target, there have been a few Mozilla exploits that gained
some noteriety, but it's the dominant browser and the banks have to
support it. Mozilla isn't, and anyone using it probably knows how to fire
up IE just for banking (which is probably the best policy - Mozilla for
every day browsing. This way when you use IE it's less likely to have
been hacked).
You don't have to give up FireFox because of your bank, just leave IE and
only use it when you need to. That's what I do.
Oh, and Hi, I'm new here.
Mark