Linux Format forums

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

johnhudson — Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:25 pm

Author: johnhudson

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:25 pm

The long delay in loading is because they use at least four flash videos on the opening page. I put in a suggestion that they use an HTML5 compatible format and use flash only as a fallback.

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

redbaron — Tue Nov 29, 2011 8:25 pm

Author: redbaron

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 8:25 pm

Not sure and dont care what systems Nationwide use they accepted my registration using linux years ago and i have used a number of distros and versions of firefox over this time they have never mentioned i am using a non supported os or browser ...

I have never had any trouble accessing the banking page or any other page ...

EXCEPT ...it takes up to five minutes to load the page !

once there its works fine and had no security issues to date ....!

hope that helps...

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

pastychomper — Tue Nov 22, 2011 2:08 pm

Author: pastychomper

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 2:08 pm

According to Netcraft, nationwide.co.uk (like most large company websites) runs on Linux, so I hope they're happy with its security.

Even with an all-singing, gold-backed, guaranteed VPN I still think it's unwise to encourage people to use Windows for banking, but IANAB.

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

ajgreeny — Tue Nov 22, 2011 11:54 am

Author: ajgreeny

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 11:54 am

I have just tried connecting to the new NW website and managed to do so with no problems at all, other than the whole site being rather slow. This may be that my machine is now fairly old (about 5 -6 years old sempron2400+) but other than that it all worked well.

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 classic gnome desktop, but with firefox 8.0 installed from the stable firefox ppa repositories, which may make some difference; perhaps the regular FF from Ubuntu 10.04 repos is too early and will not work as well as FF 8.

It is amazing, however, that a large organisation like that is not aware of the extra security advantages of using Linux and open source applications and OSs. Who is it that advises them? Microsoft?

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

johnhudson — Mon Nov 21, 2011 7:54 pm

Author: johnhudson

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 7:54 pm

I think the background to all these promises is that Nationwide signed up to some software which essentially creates a VPN from a Windows/Mac computer to their website and that all these promises are part of the contract they have made with the software provider.

I did contact them at the time to say that I assumed that the lack of such provision for Linux was because it was secure enough anyway - which they did not dispute!

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

Nuke — Mon Nov 21, 2011 11:32 am

Author: Nuke

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 11:32 am

Nationwide wrote:

we take our Internet Banking security seriously. .. providing you are using one of our supported browsers, you automatically benefit from our Internet Banking Promise.

johnhudson wrote:

I doubt the promise would stand up in law if you could demonstrate that your computer was secure and they were using less inherently secure software.

I would not like to try explaining internet security, Linux or OSS to a judge.

I think a better argument would be that, if Natwide won't underwrite your security if you are using an "unsupported" browser, they should refuse your login (like so many sites did in the bad old days if you were not using IE).

So it looks like we need to return to spoofing, again like in the olden days. I've even forgotten how to do it in FF. If it came to court I would claim I >had< been using IE - I do have dual boot on my PC so I can play Windows games but I refuse to use Windows on the Internet. If Natwide want to play silly technical games with me I have no qualms about playing back.

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

johnhudson — Mon Nov 21, 2011 8:56 am

Author: johnhudson

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 8:56 am

I doubt the promise would stand up in law if you could demonstrate that your computer was secure and they were using less inherently secure software.

In practice I've only ever used Linux to access the Nationwide website and I've never had any problem unlike customers of other banks. Their attention to security has also been better than many other companies' - but, as I pointed out above, I have been trying to persuade them to move over to FOSS because they trumpet the mutuality ethos which is of course the same ethos that animates FOSS.

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

PCNetSpec — Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:22 am

Author: PCNetSpec

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:22 am

You do realise that you *may* not be covered against online banking fraud by the Nationwide's "Internet Banking Promise" ?

Supported Browsers:-
http://www.nationwide.co.uk/internetbanking/helpandsupport/browserhelp.htm#tab3

Nationwide wrote:

What we don't support

1. Any Beta versions of browsers
2. Any browsers running on any Linux distribution (e.g. Konqueror/KDE, Firefox/Ubuntu)
3. Camino, Omniweb or Shiira on Mac OS X

Nationwide Internet Banking Promise:-
http://www.nationwide.co.uk/internetbanking/onlinesecurity/howwekeepyousafe/ourpromise.htm

Nationwide wrote:

At Nationwide, we take our Internet Banking security seriously. When using our Internet Banking service, providing you are using one of our supported browsers, you automatically benefit from our Internet Banking Promise.

We're so confident of our site's security that we take full responsibility for it: if you ever innocently suffer any fraud as a result of our Internet Banking service, we'll refund any money taken from your account. That's a promise.

So, with our promise, you can be safe in the knowledge that Nationwide has your interests at heart..

They take their internet banking security that seriously that they support IE6, yet nothing running on Linux ???

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

johnhudson — Sun Nov 20, 2011 8:40 pm

Author: johnhudson

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 8:40 pm

I logged in with chromium without any problems and viewed it with Konqueror without any problems.

They have begun migrating it to HTML5 - in the same way as a lot of people have begun to do - by changing a number of elements and leaving others. So the charset is HTML5 but the stylesheets are not and they are not using Google's Javascript for IE yet.

I have already made suggestions in that direction.

Re: Nationwide's Web Site

heiowge — Sun Nov 20, 2011 10:11 am

Author: heiowge

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 10:11 am

Perhaps an upgrade to a more current version of firefox may help. I'm currently using 7.0.1 under Linux Mint 11.

Nationwide's Web Site

Nuke — Sun Nov 20, 2011 9:24 am

Author: Nuke

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 9:24 am

Anyone else here use Nationwide Bldg Society?

They have just changed their on-line banking website, and broken it for me on Suse 11.4 running Firefox 3.6.18; I can log in, but FF crashes after a minute or two. However, on my other PC it seems OK on Ubuntu running Firefox 3.6.11

They have a list of "supported browsers" in which they say they support Firefox 8 on Windows, but specifically say they do not "support" anything on Linux.

I thought the days of websites depending on specific browsers was over. Looks like I shall switch my main finances to Lloyds.