ok, time for less whinging and more action.

after my last post - on how natwest bank, for no good reason, do not yet allow me to access my account using the mozilla browser - it occured to me that the only reason natwest know i’m using mozilla is because i tell them i am. what would happen if i told natwest i was using something else?

other browsers, such as opera, allow you to change your user agent string at will and pretend you are using a different browser. to do this in mozilla you have to mess with a configuration file. there are some not very clear instructions. find the prefs.js file in your mozilla configuration directory (on linux mine was in the ~/.mozilla/kd/qqunigwh.slt/ directory) and create a user.js file in the same directory if it doesn’t already exist. add a line like

user_pref("general.useragent.override", "Mozilla/4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.1\8 i686; Nav)"); to this file and restart mozilla. you can paste whatever browser identification string you like in here, but i used the identification string from my old netscape 4 browser as that was what i wished to fool natwest that i was using. 

the result is as far as i can tell a faultless user experience using the natwest online banking facility with mozilla.

the bugger is that i can’t easily switch back to telling sensible websites i’m using mozilla without changing the file and restarting mozilla.

[i feel compelled to put in a boring disclaimer here that the risks are all yours if you copy my actions. my personal feeling is that if the security of my browser is good enough for at least four other banks it ought to be good enough for natwest and i take responsibility if the privacy of my bank data is compromised by my own actions. ]