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The Register published a list this week of banks who do, and do not, support so-called “alternative browsers”, namely, “anything but IE and Netscape Navigator 4.*”. It appears to be an abbreviated list, compared to other lists of banks that reject browsers on baseless grounds; perhaps, given the notorious conservatism of financial industry IT staff, we should be lucky they’re not requiring us to use IBM WebExplorer for OS/2 and/or the original line mode browser for the NeXT cube, but still. As the article points out, any bank that argues that you must use Internet Explorer for Windows for “security reasons” isn’t really paying attention to the situation. Or, worse, they are, but believe in security by ubiquity, as opposed to obscurity. Wake up, banks (and the companies who write software for them) – other browsers may well be safer and provide an even more stable platform for deployment of your Web-based account access software, and may do so without annoying or exposing your customers to the very security holes you’re supposedly trying to plug. Thanks to Olly Hodgson for bringing this to our attention.

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