Fedora Browsers and banking login pages

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1

Hello,

I’m a pretty much happy user of Fedora 42 KDE Plasma edition w Wayland.

However, recently I’m noticing something new about the way the commercial eco-system of corporate websites react to linux, which i wanted to bring up for the Red-Hat and Fedora community’s attention:

No matter which browser I use on my Fedora desktop, (I have firefox from the official repo, and “ungoogled-chromium” from copr (v. Version 142.0.7444.134 (Official Build, ungoogled-chromium) Ungoogled Chromium (64-bit))…banking logins are a problem.

I’ve had 2 such incidents with different institutions in the last week, having difficulty no matter which browser on my desktop (firefox, or chrome).
Without wanting to divulge too much, but say discover.com, i try to login w userid and pwd, even before any browser has a chance to verify the id / pwd combo (which normally takes 1-2 secs on average), the error message pops up, instantly when you click “login” button : “something went wrong on our end” etc.

However, in both cases logging in from iPad, or Android chrome is no problem using the same pwd/id….

I’ve also had difficulty paying on CVS.com w paypal or even credit card directly.
it’s a bit worrisome that being OS agnostic is no longer a principle.

2

I’ve been battling “something went wrong” from my health insurance company. Login requires entering a code sent via email, but the message usually expires before it reaches my preferred email on a local “community network” server, so was forced to switch to Gmail. Once I succeed in logging in, I get “something went wrong” when trying to display the account activity. This started 2 months ago and I have spent many hours trying suggestions to use a different browser or OS. They keep telling me the problem is fixed and then I have to clear cookies and cache and a different browser. The error occurs with every browser and OS’s I have (I don’t use Windows).

I’ve been too busy to dig into the cause using Firefox troubleshoot/“safe” mode.

1 Like
3

This is not the case in every country.

I see two ways to deal with this (in the long term)

  1. Make an official complaint to your bank.
  2. Develop a system to spoof browser IDs.
4

it shouldn’t have to come down to “spoofing”. That’s the entire point. In what way are open-source “chrome” and open-source “firefox” not worthy of transacting commercially?

5

They are. Around the world they are considered the most secure.

6

I have no issues like that and I use Vivaldi (it runs on Chromium). However, I have had logins not work a few times if I have cleared my cookies before attempting the login. Don’t know if that might be your issue.

7

it can’t be “cookies” if the same behavior happens on 2 browsers……and resolves fine on other devices.

8

I’ve run into websites that limit themselves to certain “user agents”. So, a quick experiment could be to use a windows/android user agent string and see if the website works?

9

Not necessarily cookies, but are you using some addon like uBlock Origin or similar in your desktop browser(s), which might block something like a captcha? I have had that cause login issues, even though all my passwords come out of a password manager and I know that I don’t mistype them.