[SOLVED] bank of america blocks linux?

[bad_gui]

I do my online banking with Bank of America here is the US. 

I can no longer connect to their website with any of the 3 broswers on VL5.9. 
For example Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.21) Gecko/20090411 SeaMonkey/1.1.16
I get the following error "Bad request Your browser sent a query this server could not understand. "

Idownloaded the latest Mozilla Firefox 3.5.3 and get the same error.

When I boot into windows both Internet Explorer and mozilla firefox have no problems.

This seems to be an anti-Linux effect.  Can I spoof my browser to seem to be a Windows OS?
I have read that it is possible but frowned upon as bad netiquette.

 

[Daniel]

Yes, it is possible to make your browser say that is even Internet Explorer 6.0 running on Windows XP or a bunch of other browsers and operating systems. I know that with the Konqueror web browser you can go into (I think) Tools and change the Browser Identification to one of several combinations. There might be a plugin or something for Firefox that does that but I haven't looked.

EDIT: I just looked and there definitely are plugins for Firefox that do that and more. Here's the results of a search I did for that stuff. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=user%2Fagent&cat=all

[sledgehammer]

I have no problem posting to Bank of America on my linux system.

[bad_gui]

I've looked on google and tried clearing cache, cookies and passwords.

I have tried a flash blocker to no avail.

I haven't changed my router settings or any global linux settings that I can remember.

[StrayBit]

As I remember, I had to specifically allow bankofamerica.com in the popup blocker.

[bad_gui]

I still can't connect.

I switched off popup blocker and installed a mozilla toolbar that allows me to switch headers to IE6.0 WinXP

I searched Google with "browser sent a query ..." and the vast majority are related to BankofAmerica.

I just don't understand how 3 browsers have the same problem. 

The strange thing is that the main log in window used to show my username partially obscured but now it never does-
it's as if it can't write or read cookies (I allow all cookies from this site).

[Hiero2]

This may - or may not help. I suspect it won't, but I'm going to try.

I can get Firefox to connect to the BoA online account site, no problem. I have popups permitted for the site - but I don't think it uses them. Javascript and Java are also enabled, and it does use Javascript, if I'm not mistaken.

I can't think of any other settings that should affect this. If your settings are the same, and you are still getting the error, it seems to me that the error is in some other setting area - like the firewall, or your video settings.

Good luck;
Hiero2

[bad_gui]

Perhaps this is related?

I also noticed that when I start up my computer, there is a message that it has been 49,000 days
since the drives were last checked. Fsck runs and usually there is an error about some date in the
future.

I don think my CMOS battery is dead because I have the correct time and don't use an NTP server.
But then I don understand why fsck loses track of the last time it booted correctly (49,000 days ~135 years).

Here is a link that describes this mysterious problem.

http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com/msg07575.html

This error seems to have appeared at the same time as my Bank Of America connection problems.  Coincidence or related?

[bad_gui]

I tried something I saw an Ubuntu forum for this problem:

Code:

rm /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so

It solved the problem.   

Apparently, all of the browsers in VL5.9 used the same flash lib. 

The flash player must have auto upgraded a few days ago to the latest broken version for linux.

See here to change default settings:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html