Hey John, so sorry you have to deal with this from your bank. As long as you're using the latest version of Firefox, you should be fine to visit any website and not be considered "insecure". You are using the latest version of Firefox 131. So you are doing nothing wrong.

A few banks pull this "we don't support *blank* browser anymore" move from time to time.

What's more likely happening is that the support team for Coventry Building Society is not being told the true reason for why they don't support Firefox anymore. Behind the scenes, these types of decisions come from the managers of the web development and IT departments. And if they think it will save them time in testing or money overall to stop supporting Firefox, then that's really the reason why they stopped supporting it. Because it takes a little bit more time for their developers and testers to make sure their banking site works in EVERY browser. So you have Safari from Apple, Chrome from Google, Edge from Microsoft, Brave browser and Opera browser in the list of the browsers they test with. It's possible they said this is too time consuming, let's cut the hours it takes to test in all these browsers and eliminate them down to the top 3 most used. In this case, it could be Chrome, Safari and Edge browsers.

Now they don't want to admit this publicly because it will make them look cheap or lazy or both. But rest assured that Firefox is not insecure. This is sadly a trend that has been happening over the last few years to reduce costs for companies. In addition to big layoffs in the tech sector. They will also cut team budgets inside their companies. That will mean less paid testing hours and development hours. Sometimes they also cut browser support to make things more simple for themselves and perform less work supporting all these browsers. But Firefox should not be anymore complex to support more than any other browser. So I believe it comes down to a cost savings and a time savings.

Sorry for the long answer! I wanted you to have a more indepth answer than most people are willing to tell you. Because I think you deserve to know how banks and technology companies work in general and behind the scenes.

Noah,

Thanks for the reply. I used to be a software engineer and my son is an IT networking specialist so we suspected it was the bank being disingenuous. Firefox is a hugely popular and widely used browser and, according to several internet security websites, just about the most secure one available. Chrome comes way down the list and at least one has Edge as tenth out of ten.

If Coventry Building Society can't be bothered to support Firefox then I'm unlikely to want to continue to supprt them.

Best wishes.

I forgot to mention some banks prefer if you use their mobile app over their website. And sometimes they will move features you like from the regular website to only be shown in the mobile app. Then it becomes a "mobile only" feature. So they have tricks to force people to switch to the areas they want them to.

But this doesn't solve your current login problem. So I would suggest you use whatever browser that is accepted by your bank or use their mobile app to login. I hate that they've taken your choice of browser away but until they change their mind or soften their stance on this, you'll have to use those other methods.

I was trying to collect a list of banks that try to drop support for Firefox but it seems that the smaller banks do this more often due to having smaller development and test teams which don't have the big budgets like Chase, HSBC, Llyolds or Barclays. Out of all of these big banks, Barclays seems to give us the most trouble every now & then with customers not being able to login or a feature inside the site not working.

We can also report your bank to https://webcompat.com - which is a website that tracks website compatibility issues. The people working there may be able to ask the bank directly why they are not supporting Firefox and can clear up confusion about why they think Firefox can't be supported by their site.

Noah, Thanks for the reply. I used to be a software engineer and my son is an IT networking specialist so we suspected it was the bank being disingenuous. Firefox is a hugely popular and widely used browser and, according to several internet security websites, just about the most secure one available. Chrome comes way down the list and at least one has Edge as tenth out of ten. If Coventry Building Society can't be bothered to support Firefox then I'm unlikely to want to continue to support them.

John, that's awesome. Happy that you've both been in that business world and had the same suspicions. I just wish the companies would be more forthcoming about the reasons for why they do these things. Perhaps if enough customers complain to them through their feedback forms, they will reverse their decision on this. But we both know that might take a long time to generate a change.

So if switching banks is a acceptable option to you over this, that's very admirable. Just be sure that it's convenient for you to do so. As I hate for tech problems to upend people's lives and cause them to have to jump thru hoops just to have stable experiences on the internet.

I 'phoned the this morning to be told they consider Firefox insecure and no longer support its use.

I would consider Firefox to be just as secure if not more secure compared to the Chrome/Chromium based web browsers. To me this is just being lazy and if it works adequately in Chrome/Chromium browsers then it is good enough. If they make the site work properly in Firefox then it should work in all current web browsers.

If only browsers like Edge and Opera continued to use the browser engines that they had originally instead of downgrading to being Chrome/Chromium based and increasing the Chrome/Chromium market share.

I've just sent them a message (using Chrome) telling them I think they are asking their customer support people to lie and, if that's the way the choose to operate, I'll be moving my money. I can probably get a better rate elsewhere anyway.

Cheers.