420486 - Digital Insight Denies "Gecko is Gecko"

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[David E. Ross]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 SeaMonkey/1.1.8
Build Identifier: 

Digital Insight (a subsidiary of Intuit) develops secure Web sites for financial institutions.  When a problem with one of those sites while using SeaMonkey, they insist the browser is at fault, that I should instead be using Firefox.  

One such problem is the logon to my account at Premier America Credit Union, a client of Digital Insight.  My standard configuration includes accepting cookies only from the originating Web site.  With Premier America, I was always asked two challenge questions.  When I setup a separate profile only for Premier America and with cookies accepted from all domains, the challenge questions were required only with the first logon.  I reported this to Premier America, who forwarded my complaint to Digital Insight.  The response was that the Web site had been validated only for IE and Firefox and that I should not be using SeaMonkey.  

I then provided Premier America with the following links:  
<http://geckoisgecko.org/>
<http://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Sardisson/Gecko_is_Gecko>
<http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Browser_Detection_and_Cross_Browser_Support>
They forwarded that information to Digital Insight, who replied that SeaMonkey is quite different from Firefox because the user interface to set cookie permissions is quite different, ignoring the fact that both interfaces merely set the preference variable network.cookie.cookieBehavior used by Gecko.  

The final response from Digital Insight (via Premier America) is that they will not accept there is any problem unless I can demonstrate it while using Firefox.  

Rather than fighting this issue with Premier America Credit Union, this must be addressed to Digital Insight and its Intuit parent.  Premier America is only one client of Digital Insight.  Other Digital Insight clients might be equally impacted.  Thus, this problem must be addressed at its source and not where symptoms appear.  


Reproducible: Always




This is likely affecting Camino and other non-Firefox Gecko browsers.

Comment 1

[David E. Ross]

I've found no evidence a sniffing problem here.  

The problem at Premier America Credit Union is resolved by accepting cookies from all domains without any need to spoof Firefox.  Digital Insight (Premier America's Web developer) insists that I should be able to login while accepting only cookies from premier.org and that any problem with logging-in with that cookie preference lies within SeaMonkey.  However, the screen shot of the Firefox window for setting cookie preference clearly shows accepting cookies from all domains.  They refuse to discuss the possibility of any problem in SeaMonkey because that Firefox window is quite different from the equivalent SeaMonkey window.  According to them, this difference means that Gecko is NOT Gecko.  

Thus, the problem is one of attitude and not sniffing.  I'm removing bug #334967 as blocked by this bug.   

Comment 2

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

(In reply to comment #0)

> client of Digital Insight.  My standard configuration includes accepting
> cookies only from the originating Web site.  With Premier America, I was 
...
> The final response from Digital Insight (via Premier America) is that they will
> not accept there is any problem unless I can demonstrate it while using
> Firefox.  

Does the problem actually occur when configuring Firefox with the same prefs as Seamonkey? I'd suggest simply creating a fresh profile for Firefox, running Firefox once, then replacing the user.js/prefs.js file(s) with the versions from the "broken" Seamonkey profile.

If doing that fails to reproduce the problem using Firefox, that suggests that there *is* an aspect of sniffing going on here.

If the problem occurs on Firefox once you've done this, I suspect this is something else that can be chalked up to breakage as a result of the difference in meaning between Safari and IE's "block third-party cookies" and Gecko's definition. See discussion in bug 419421, bug 417800, and bug 324397.

That they're not willing to write up specific support instructions for a marginal browser isn't a huge deal, but their attitude could use an adjustment.

Comment 3

[David E. Ross]

I don't have Firefox on my PC.  With a dial-up connection, I don't feel like downloading it just to prove that Gecko is indeed Gecko.  

Premier America is a very large credit union.  Perhaps someone else with an interest in Tech Evangelism, with Firefox installed, and with an account at Premier America might want to test this.  

Comment 4

[David E. Ross]

This may be a more significant problem than I originally thought.  In a phone conversation this morning with Premier America Credit Union's "Vice-President for Automated and Remote Services", I learned that Digital Insight provides Web development services for possibly 1,000 or more financial institutions -- small, medium, and large.  

That's 1,000 different Web sites affected by Digital Insight denying the reality that Gecko is indeed Gecko!!

Changing Severity from "normal".  

Comment 5

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

INCOMPLETE due to lack of activity since the end of 2009.

If someone is willing to investigate the issues raised in this bug to determine whether they still exist, *and* work with the site in question to fix any existing issues, please feel free to re-open and assign to yourself.

Sorry for the bugspam; filter on "NO MORE PRE-2010 TE BUGS" to remove.

Comment 6

[David E. Ross]

This is no longer a problem at Premier America's Web site.  However, I believe this might be a problem at other financial institutions.  If I see this problem again, I will reopen this bug report.