Dear Bank of America: Are We Still Living in 1995?
I just encountered my second major piece of software used by Bank of America for my business accounts that will only work with Internet Explorer and most definitely will not work with Chrome. Their ACH/Treasury/Direct Payments system has to run on Internet Explorer (only) and now I find their secure email system that sends me all my merchant account notices does not work on Chrome and only works on IE.
I am just waiting for the moment that a Bank of America tech support person tells me I have to use Netscape.
IsaacCrawford:
It'll get even more interesting once IE is no longer being supported by Microsoft. They have already announced its replacement.
June 5, 2015, 11:27 amIsaacCrawford:
I know in Safari you can go into the developer's menu and have it report that it is another browser like IE. Can you do the same thing in Chrome?
June 5, 2015, 11:29 amTim Broberg:
Tried IE Tab?
June 5, 2015, 12:07 pmMatthew Slyfield:
Have you tried Fire Fox?
June 5, 2015, 12:09 pmSteve-O:
At work I have one application that can only run in IE 8 and one that needs a more recent version, and you can't uninstall/install without admin rights.
June 5, 2015, 12:25 pmmarque2:
All browsers pretend they are Mozilla anyway.
June 5, 2015, 2:13 pmmarque2:
Its replacement - now called Project Safari, is still in deep beta for Win 10. Though I have to say, for flash video, it works a lot better than Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer on Win10.
June 5, 2015, 2:14 pmRusty Bill:
Or Pale Moon, a Firefox spin-off (much less graphics intensive).
June 5, 2015, 4:50 pmmesocyclone:
They are not up to Netscape yet. Give them a few years.
June 5, 2015, 5:27 pmColoComment:
Switch banks. Why are you patronizing a bank that fails to meet your expectations?
June 5, 2015, 5:34 pmherdgadfly:
Google Chrome is not without problems, so I am not sure why we pick on IE. For example, if the interface to the BoA program requires Microsoft Silverlight, Chrome will not run it. Google doesn't agree with the industry standard, so they programmed around it and you Mr. User are screwed. If you run Netflix using Chrome, the picture is inferior to IE and Firefox. Firefox runs Silverlight on a permission of the user basis.
Chrome load times have slowed so much that I have returned to Firefox for much of my browsing
June 5, 2015, 8:40 pmmarque2:
I would guess, BOA is using an antiquated Active X control, which only works in IE.
June 5, 2015, 9:39 pmobloodyhell:
I can only presume that few people are using whatever tool you are talking about.
Their online banking web page, and their mobile apps work quite fine and are up to date. The online banking app works fine with Chrome and Firefox, and the mobile app has worked fine on three different makes of Android phones.
And, unlike another equally large bank, the online password is allowed to be in excess of 20 characters.
My point would be that, they certainly update their main access tools just fine. Perhaps you're the one using an antiquated banking access mechanism? :-D
Either that or they don't appear to consider business accounts a major user of online services, unlike (presumably) consumer accounts, which also may well be the case.
June 6, 2015, 2:11 amobloodyhell:
People who know computers pick on IE for a litany of reasons.
1) Microsoft routinely publishes standards, then violates and ignores those standards. They do this in almost ALL their apps, not just on the web.
2) IE is and has always been a MASSIVE security hazard. I estimate that, if you take IE and OUTLOOK and trash them, and use alternatives, you have pretty much made yourself immune to about 75% of the malware in existence.
3) Microsoft cheated -- despite Warren';s routinely spouted ignorance on the matter -- true, willful ignorance since the points he makes have been repeatedly demonstrated to be false by me and others -- to gain market predominance.
And it wasn't until someone with equally deep pockets (Google) challenged them for the web browser market that their cheating stopped doing them much good.
June 6, 2015, 2:18 am===========================================================
That's not all the reasons, but it's a good start.
obloodyhell:
Don't worry, their "Let's Fuck With Chrome and Firefox Users" browser sub-group hasn't touched it yet. After that it'll be as buggy as IE.
June 6, 2015, 2:20 amIke Pigott:
Chrome has gotten bloated and laggy. IE 11 works great, and the new Edge browser will shed all of the legacy support that's held Microsoft back.
Oh, and of you're banking using Chrome, make sure your password isn't being synced across instances of your browser.
June 6, 2015, 5:18 amJim Clay:
It probably uses Java, which requires a NPAPI plugin. Chrome has been gradually phasing out NPAPI because it is unsecure, but Oracle hasn't put out a non-NPAPI plugin to run Java. In April Chrome by default refused to run NPAPI plugins, but you could go into the settings and enable them. Soon they will turn off the ability to enable them.
June 6, 2015, 8:02 amJim Clay:
And ironically enough, given that you mockingly mention Netscape, NPAPI stands for Netscape Plugin API.
June 6, 2015, 8:12 amCapitalistRoader:
I can't access Quickbooks Online using the latest Comodo Dragon version of Chrome. And I never use IE so it may be so old and/or not set up that I won't even start it. So to access QB Online I ended up installing the raw build of Chromium for Windows x86, right off the trunk (their words.)
June 6, 2015, 8:34 amherdgadfly:
Not to worry. As soon as MS forces us off Windows 7 and onto the suspected abomination that is called Windows 10, Internet Explorer will be replaced by Windows Edge - that cutting edge browser that knows what security is really like. This is just some more Microsoft muscle to force us to an unstable operating system that is burning programmer hours attempting to make their deadline - and then to require a Microsoft browser. Gosh I thought the courts told them that required browsers are no-no.
June 6, 2015, 12:00 pmJohn:
Ah yes -- Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, is baking the steaming pile of insecurity called flash into IE10. Could they be more stupid?
June 6, 2015, 9:49 pmQuoteLight Dashboard:
A lot of silverlight. Even MS is moving away from that.
Recently, I have hit several instances where Chrome is discontinuing support for NPAPI https://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation
Sites need upgrading in a hurry as the new browsers are dropping support for buggy security risk apps.
June 7, 2015, 9:44 amobloodyhell:
}}} Not to worry. As soon as MS forces us off Windows 7 and onto the suspected abomination that is called Windows 10
Not to worry at all. Microsoft has redefined "10" to be an odd number. And W10 is thus an odd numbered OS, and those are usually ok.
Well, the exact ordering of that proposition may be suspect. But in a nutshell, it encapsulates the approaching situation.
June 7, 2015, 12:46 pmobloodyhell:
}}} Ah yes -- Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, is baking the steaming pile of insecurity called flash into IE10. Could they be more stupid?
Dude, if someone comes up with a (mostly) backwards-compatible "secure" version of Flash, people will flock to it.
Until then, there's WAY too much legit content out there that uses it to exclude it.
June 7, 2015, 12:48 pmMatthew Teague:
This is VERY common in industries with a small vendor base that have been around a long time. We see it in automotive with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools. A lot of the big providers still require IE to function... and my company builds on Chrome, so we have to convince them to run two browsers.
June 8, 2015, 8:09 amblackbellamy:
"software used by Bank of America for my business accounts that will only work with Internet Explore"
June 8, 2015, 9:41 amMaximum Liberty:
Warren:
Ask them to send you the software needed, but tell them you can only use floppies.
June 8, 2015, 10:51 amjust a thought:
LO AO L
June 9, 2015, 11:02 am