241344 - Natwest online banking facilities (www.nwolb.com) are restricted by UA string

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 66911

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English Other, defect)

Description

[James McGuigan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0) Gecko/20040316 MultiZilla/1.6.3.0d
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040316 MultiZilla/1.6.3.0d

Natwest online banking facilities (www.nwolb.com) are restricted by UA string.
They required IE4+ or Netscape 4.7 to use the site. 

Modifing the UA string to NS4.7 (but not 4.8) was a valid workaround. Modifing
the UA string to IE6 gave a javascript menu incompatable with Mozilla.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:




Actions taken:

Email sent to [e-mail] and [e-mail]

I am natwest customer who uses Mozilla 1.5 as my default browser. When I try and
login to the natwest online banking I usually get presented with a page saying
"unsuported browser, we only support IE6 or NS4.7".

I can get round this problem by spoofing my user agent string, to read as
Netaspe 4.7, which allows me into the online banking section and I have been
able to use the site without any problems.

I have also tried spoofing as IE6, but with this the server returns pages with a
javascript menu system, that is incompatable with Mozilla.

I would very much like to be able to use the online banking facilities without
having to spoof my user-agent string each time I wish to login. If you could add
in the Mozilla UA string to your list of supported browsers (along with those
for other Gecko based browsers: Netscape 6+7,
Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox, Galleon, Beonex, K-Meleon, Camino etc), and simply
serve these browsers the Netscape 4.7 pages.

An even better solution would be to not ban any browsers, but give a link
allowing "unsuported" browsers to access the site, possibly with a warning that
the site may be broken (It might also be testing a wider range of broswers for
compatability).

Either of these solutions could be done with only a minimal change the site
programming. 

--
James McGuigan


Results:

I recieved no email reply, but they have changed their UA filter to allow
Mozilla to access the site with any "Mozilla/5.0 UA" string.

In the "Browser does not support SSL" error page
(http://www.nwolb.com/denial.asp?reason=403.4) they have the following text
* Internet Explorer Version 4 or above
* Netscape Navigator 4 or above
* Mozilla 1.5 and up
* AOL 6.0 and up (PC only/AOL subscribers only)
<link to microsoft.com>
<link to netscape.com>
<link to mozilla.org>

However their "incompatable browser" page
(https://www.nwolb.com/secure/denial.asp?reason=v4) has not been updated.

The opera UA string is not supported.

Comment 1

[Bogdan Stroe]

See http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=4563
and bug 66911.

Comment 2

[OstGote!]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 66911 ***