Citibank infuriating its customers with Linux-hostile site

;-)

I wonder do people deliberately use unusual items just to have an arguement when these unusual items are not accepted everywhere.

I would have thought the Linux "community" would have together by now and fixed it, why haven't they?

Personally, I feel that anyone who uses Firefox asks for trouble. My son says it's AOL's fault it don't work on either my PC or Laptop. Me? I just don't want to use it. It's slow, and attaches favorites that I never asked it to. I'm not an advocate of Sir William Gates, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Now, I wonder if Chrome will be any better than IE. I just want a browser, not some all-singing-and-dancing web browser, often with moving ads.

I had to allow Javascript to "experience" this effect, but then I could reproduce it perfectly. When changing the user agent to IE7, nothing happened, only as a Linux user, the flash turns the screen white. So it's not a flash problem, they are really blocking Linux users.
I think, that subprime or NoScript will solve this problem in future.

I am sure people who use linux can find a fix and recompile firefox or just change the browser agent. You could also wait for Google Browser.

So what's the problem, Firefox or Linux or Firefox on Linux?

Nelson, you're an idiot. It's Citi who need to fix the problem, not the Linux distributions. As a reasoned explanation of why people use Linux in preference to other platforms would clearly be outside your comprehension, I won't waste my time.

I use the citibank site, with firefox. You can use it if you block the flash crap.

I've used Citibank's site from Firefox (and Konqueror) on FreeBSD for years. It works fine without flash (the flash stuff is just for ads as far as I can tell), so with Flashblock (FF plugin) the site works fine.

I have been able to access my citibank credit card account under linux for years. Although annoying, you have to download the adblock plus add-on, pull up your account, then start specifically blocking the flash content. After that, it should no longer be a problem.

"I wonder do people deliberately use unusual items just to have an arguement when these unusual items are not accepted everywhere."

Yes, I suppose that standards like those defining the Web are all about supporting a single vendor. I imagine that you'd just love it if your Visa or Mastercard were refused at a store because it wasn't specifically issued by the Neocon Bank of America, or whichever institution it might be that happens to be favoured by those giving the arbitrary refusal.

The best way to fix the problem is not to do business with Citibank, although with them persistently hawking consumer loans and dodgy investments, they're hardly high up on the list of companies I'd want to do business with, anyway.

Funny, I haven't been able to use CitiBanks web page to access my account since upgrading to FireFox 3, and I'm on XP. Having worked for both the retail and the private bank though, the attitude of blocking certain customers is not uncommon. Workers at CitiBank are under a lot of stress to perform and out-of-the-a** responses like this are quite common. They just don't care to deal with the situation. And customer service? Well, that is a very dirty phrase within the banks walls. Customer Service means spending money, which they don't like to do.

There are other sties that only support IE at the check out. One site that I came accroos years ago is an IT certification site. While I have not visited that site in almost 3 years. I never purchased anything from them because of this. 

Why is there a WC3 standard when people can't code to it?

Perhaps they [Citibank] only want you to work through Internet Explorer with MS entrusted with your valuables.

Certainly Firefox is not supported by my bank and thus is IE dragged into use....... which is rather surprising but not really if you are into all that empire building conspiracy twittering.

Nelson, this is a server side issue, the Linux community can't and won't fix it.
Citibank should just stop screwing around with its customers.

I have a card with Wells Fargo, works fine with Linux and Firefox, Iceweasle (sp?)etc. Maby Citibank has enough customers already.

They spent 2 years telling me internet banking would be enabled on Firefox 'in the next month or two'. 

I think they did finally fix it, ironically a month or two after I closed my account of 10 years standing (all in credit, even as a student) and went somewhere else.

There is a definite bug fix, switch banks. Why people insist on banking with a firm with questionable business practices is beyond me.

We have seen frequently security problems with Adobe Macromedia Flash. We have also seen plenty of security problems with JavaScript. And IMHO there is no software more bug infested than Microsoft Internet Explorer, except for Microsoft Windows. And THAT is exactly the only model supported by Citibank?

I've been using Firefox on Ubuntu for years. You can still access your account information by just pressing stop before the page goes blank. Just be sure to wait till the login box is loaded. This has been working fine for me for a long time.

I have had the problem as well. As soon an the page loads , before it goes white hit the stop load button and you can proceed normally.

The problem also occurs with Solaris as well. ( I'm it could be applied to UNIX in general)

If you let the we page load, but press the "esc" key prior to the flash content taking over it works just fine.

It has been doing this for at least 2 years now. Doubt that they have ever attempted to work on this issue just a bad IT department doing stupid things.

Try the "flash zapper" (as well as the other "bookmarklets") from the following website:

https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html

These little things are incredible. Easy to "install" onto Firefox, Opera, and even IE (just drag and drop them onto your toolbar) - they work wonders. Making browsing so much less stressful, you will wonder how you managed without them. The CitiBank sites work fine on my Slackware setup, after "zapping" them. (Though I sound like a "company spokesman" I am in no way affiliated with the above site...just one who is impressed.)

Seems to me this is a new form of DOS attack:
provide a poisoned link as a paid advert...

Dhu

Hello,

I found if you right click on the web page, and click forword, you will then click on continue until the log comes back. It is sad that they do not work with firefox. Maybe it does not work well with there marketing software to see what your buying?


So when is somebody going to fix the "open sauce" and "Mozzarella Foundation" errors?

Yeah, so for me I just install the Stylish extension and do something like:

#help-overlay{ display: none; }

You can also install Firebug and pop it up with F12, open up the HTML to the help-overlay popup that they show on the page, and delete the element with a right click.

It's a nasty bug, but most of my machines auto-fix it by now.

I had similar issues when trying to access my Citibank account. I use the Flash Block plugin, and I can now get into my account just fine,

I, too, have experienced this same dumb behavior at www.citicards.com. (If I click fast enough on the "Sign On" button, an error page comes up due to the blank user id / password fields, from which I can sign on.) I bet some Linux user out there could fix the home page's Linux-hostile HTML in about ten minutes, given access to it. It's not something that Citibank needs to "work on" for months - there is no other conclusion than that it's deliberate. Of course, Citibank has little motive to help me, as I am one of those account holders whom credit card companies regard as "deadbeats," paying down my balance to zero every month. They'd probably be happy to be rid of me.

Just tried the site and if you block the scripts using NoScript the site loads perfectly. The moment you allow the scripts on the site, the screen goes white indeed.

The article mentions that CitiBank stated they won't walk customers through issues with CitiBank's own software if the customer is using Firefox and Linux. Isn't that like wiring a house to use non-standard outlets and power that work only with GE's appliances and then refusing to help someone connect to the power grid if their appliances come from Sunbeam rather than GE?

Gone are the days when bank or any others can ignore standards and simply functionality. While open software is indeed adept as working around such incompetence (giving them the benefit of the doubt) it only show how capable and better open software really is, once given a simple unbiased try.

1. Web pages have a standard. Follow it.

2. Contrary to what you may have been told, it is not chiefly the responsibility of software sharers, to make the Citibank site work. Who's responsibility do you guess this primarily falls? Although, the facts are they have made a way, anyway.

Please people, think.

Many outfits have poor or no support for Linux users. One that comes to mind is ADPTotalSource. Their payroll and employee benefits sites use pages that end in .do extension. This type of page is Micrsoft proprietary and cannot be displayed by Firefox in a Linux environment. It does appear to work in Firefox in a Windows environment. 

It would be nice if more E-Commerce sites were W3C compliant!

That's what I've been doing in Firefox under Ubuntu. As the login page loads, just click the "STOP" button after you see the login/password boxes (or just before). After that, I can login and do all my account stuff.

Hi. I attempted to duplicate the problem with the same SuSE 11 and FireFox3. This is what I found. Their secure site has two ip addresses. The site uses xhtml 'Jetty/5.1.10' web server, on a Java server pages platform. The front page has 6 Java scripts, 4 Cascading style sheets, two browser settings; one general, another for IE, forking to IE6 and 7. It has 7 shock wave files(yes, seven), that causes the ugly affect that everyone experiences due to Java server settings. Welcome to Java, where the CD case has a severe warning against using it in any "mission critical application". I guess that all the bank officers missed that statement on the box of the Java manual.

This site is a resources hog. Just to open it, it consumed 103 MB of my virtual memory, in a desperate attempt to impersonate Star Wars III opening scene of flashy animations. Add the constant threads established from the paranoid FireFox3 to the paranoid secure server of exchanging and confirming the cookies once per second, and you have a Middle-Eastern conflict of two parties that cannot rust each other on your screen.

My conclusion is simple. Citibank needs to bite the bullet and drop Java from the web server side, and replace it with a real secure platform built on C module or Perl, on any NSA SELinux(National Security Agency has its own version of Security enhanced web server Linux) because their server room has a disaster waiting to happen, and it won't affect anyones deposits, it will just grow in time. 

Bottom line, they need to build their website as a simple descent bank front end, not a a used cars salesman web site, with gaming in mind.

...since, in my eyes, this is a taste of some of their own medicine:

At a company I worked at in the past, one contractor (who was a real Linux buff), made a departmental resource that did not display correctly on IE (which was the corporate desktop standard). We're not talking about "didn't look pretty". We're talking about "unusable". When told about this, he simply shrugged and said "Install Firefox."

It's at this point I will turn to the Linux / Firefox crowd and say "Install IE." ;)

cancel the card, tell citibank to stuff it and move to another bank. There are so many to choose. My bank's site is even usable in links.

Blocking the following https://www.citicards.com/cards/wv/swf/filter1.swf using Adblock plus helps.

so difficult to believe a U.S. Bank would fear Open Source (or Open anything, for that matter)
Banks like to keep things under control.
that's why you can't get a job anymore if your credit score isn't good.
Let Freedom Ring!!
oh, by the way, the Federal Reserve Bank is a privately owned bank, in case you were wondering.

@Oliver

So because you know of an Idiot that was Firefox/Linux user the world should change to Windows/IE?

Idiots are everywhere... just find a mirror.

you go to https://www.accountonline.com/cards/svc/Login.do. This has worked for me.

it pussies me off that citibank.com is not supporting linux users. 

Check out this blog:
http://stealcode.blogspot.com/2008/07/citibank-doesnt-like-linuxubuntu_27.html

Quotes from blog:
"the Citibank website supports Firefox but does not support uncommon operating systems like Linux."
"Citibank only supports "secure operating systems" and that windows was the only option."
"Citibank is using Solaris."