Linux and online banking

asteroid

evening,

I work as an IT tech and often get to look other peoples computers, this has made me paranoid of all the spyware and unwanted junk thats forced on PCs these days.

I have been using my normal Windows XP computer with a Virtual Machine (thats a second computer inside my computer running another operating system) using the excellent free VirtualBox application, I am running the latest Ubuntu Linux and I am using this with Firefox to do my online banking.

Question is I did a payment yesterday with my BMI credit card yesterday to pay it off and the payment hasnt gone through (TBH only wanted this card for a free flight, Amex are useless as you cant use it to pay a lot of normal essential bills like gas/electric, car insurance etc)

What I want to know is, can someone post banking web sites that do or dont work with Linux or Firefox properly?

When I see financial organisations say there web sites "work best in Internet Explorer 6 or Netscape Navigator" its clear their IT people are bunch of muppets and dont keep up with current IT practises.

any thoughts from IT professionals with knowhow of open source software like me?

thomas01155

HSBC work fine on Firefox with Ubuntu was on there today http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/
^.^ I have xp in a box as well

[Deleted User]

asteroid wrote: »

a Virtual Machine (thats a second computer inside my computer running another operating system)

Made me smile. :rotfl:

thomas01155

You could always try wine to get internet explorer to run.

Bollotom

Both Ubuntu and SUSE linux with Firefox work with Barclays on line banking.:cool:

[Deleted User]

Simplify the whole thing and just use Firefox in a sandbox e.g. http://www.sandboxie.com/

What Sandboxes can do: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-172.htm
Sandbox Limitations: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-174.htm

thomas01155

Deleted_User wrote: »

Simplify the whole thing and just use Firefox in a sandbox e.g. http://www.sandboxie.com/

What Sandboxes can do: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-172.htm
Sandbox Limitations: http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-174.htm

How will a sandbox help?

Paul_Herring

asteroid wrote: »

What I want to know is, can someone post banking web sites that do or dont work with Linux or Firefox properly?

AccountUnity (and other sites that use their aggregation software, at least in part; Egg use it for their EMM and I think First Direct.)

I just use XP under VirtualBox (the opposite of what you're doing,) whenever I need to do a lot of banking stuff. (Otherwise I just use FF under Linux.)

[Deleted User]

thomas01155 wrote: »

How will a sandbox help?

Have you read those links?

[Deleted User]

I suppose theoretically that you would still be vunerable since the host operating system could be infected with a keylogger and no matter what you were doing in your VM, the data could still be gathered.

Dunno about you, but I as an 'it professional' also, haven't had a virus infection in years, nor spyware, malware, trojan etc. You must have some risky browsing habits if you're exposing yourself to that kind of threat..

martindow

Abbey gives a warning about unsupported browser with Firefox (using XP) although it works fine. No idea what would happen with Linux.

It is appalling that huge sites like this are badly coded so that they are IE centred.