Financial sites not up to date on browser sniffing

[eljefe3]

So I just logged into my bank account online and get this message "To provide maximum security and protection, Bank of ..... requires that you use a browser that supports 128-bit encryption.

We have determined that you are using opera Version 8.50.

In order to use, you will need to use or download another browser."

As far as I know Opera supports this.

Also a couple of my sites that are hosted on one of the very large hosts ( Public company) also tells me to upgrade my browser.

When are these people going to get with it and understand that not all of us want to use firefox or IE?

[mattglet]

Opera allows a fix to be applied to your ua.ini file. I *think* it's bankofamerica.com=5. This will trick the site into thinking you have IE.

And yes, I totally agree they need to get up to snuff. I was just telling a friend of mine yesterday he should be thankful he has an IT job in the financial industry. He'll always have work upgrading their software 10 years after the technology proved to be successful.

[encyclo]

Some financial institutions specifically block access to Opera as it doesn't respect the

autocomplete="off"

attribute for forms which is used to stop the browser saving login details (this is due to a deliberate decision by Opera software, not a missing feature). If you can get the browser to send a different user agent string you will usually find that the site itself will work.

Of course, there are still a small number of banks which insist on you using IE/Win and depend on IE-only features - often with the reason given that it is for "security" - which considering the state of IE security is rather stupid.

Either contact the bank, or change banks if they don't let you use their online banking service with your choice of browser (unless it's Netscape 2, when it's your fault!).

[eljefe3]

Thanks mattglett. I tried that but still got the same message. Funny thing I used to be able to access the BofA site with Opera, so I'm not sure if the upgrade to 8.5 is causing the problem, or if B of A changed something.

Time to fire up IE for one website.

[mattglet]

eljefe3-

I was wrong, it's bankofamerica.com=4, not 5. Give that a go... seems to work for me here at home.