We've had considerable discussion here about websites that require Internet Explorer. Financial institutions in particular seem to be prone to not letting users have their choice of browser, but one reader found that a little bit of persistence can pay off in getting them to consider more open browser standards.
"I am in a running battle with my brokerage, Securities America," the reader wrote a few months ago. "The website used to access my account will only accept Internet Explorer. There is also a disclaimer on the site that absolves Securities America of any liability for information disclosure. It seems to me that they cannot have it both ways: either they let me use a more secure browser than IE, or they should delete their disclaimer."
The reader wrote Securities America's President and other company officials saying he would feel more secure being able to use Mozilla to access his brokerage account information. "I received a letter back from their IS Security Manager saying that Mozilla had security holes also," the reader wrote. "Of course, that was the only security hole in about a year and it was patched in a day, so I thought this was a flimsy excuse. However, Securities America also said that they had no control over their website, as it's managed by Fidelity's National Financial Services."
The reader decided to try contacting National Financial as well. "I pointed out to them that when I had an account at Fidelity, their website worked perfectly well in Mozilla," he wrote. "There is no reason for a large company to write browser-specific code other than ignorance, laziness, and not caring about their customers. It is very scary to me that large financial companies know so little about computer security."
Weeks went by without a response from National Financial, so the reader feared he had struck out when a letter arrived. "National Financial does recognize the desirability of supporting various browsers, and I would like you to know that we plan on making the necessarry changes to move towards implementing technology industry standards," a senior vice president of National Financial wrote the reader. The company "has tentative plans to make changes to the architecture that supports the Securities America website to become W3C complaint."
The reader noted with satisfaction that the letter had been copied to both the CFO and CIO Securities America, perhaps indicating that his original complaint had not fallen on completely deaf ears after all. "So fighting does pay," he says. And the more customers that demand their financial institutions let them use their browser of choice, the more secure we can all feel.
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