After Firefox update bill payment on PNC banking site stopped working
Firefox updated to version 131.0 64 bit. Bill payment functions on my banking web site stopped working. I cleared cache and cookies and restarted PC but didn't fix it. I tried using Microsoft Edge and the banking web site worked as always. The bank IT person said it was a Firefox problem. Also, the site says not to block 3rd party cookies, enable cookie tracking and cross-site tracking. In Firefox, I made all changes to allow these things for this site but it still doesn't work. Looks like the latest Firefox update is causing a problem that always worked in the past, while trying to fix something else.
Modified
Chosen solution
Someone posted here that lowering their Tracking Protection from "Custom" to "Standard" fixed their broken bill pay: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1455863#answer-1679337
So try to reduce your Tracking Protection from Custom or Strict to "Standard". That's the lowest setting. If it works, that means the other choices were blocking a url the bank needed to perform Bill Pay.
Follow these steps and choose "Standard": https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop#w_adjust-your-global-enhanced-tracking-protection-settings
You might need to close and reopen the browser after doing this. And in the past, some people cleared their cache and that fixed it.
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Is this occurring on Bank of America? I saw one other report of this. Thanks for trying to check all those settings to makre sure they weren't resposible.
By any chance do you have any adblocking addons installed like uBlock Origin? I wonder if it may be playing a role in this. Or any other addons installed? I could let you know if any of them have been problematic in the past.
Modified
I don't have any adblocking addons installed. The problem occurs on the PNC Bank website on the bill payment tab. All other tabs such as account list and money transfer work fine. It's only the bill payment tab that stopped working after the last Firefox update.
Thanks, that's very helpful. I'm trying to find out what in common all these banks have with their Bill Pay systems. It feels like they must be sharing a url or scripts that they all use. So far I have only seen Bank of America and TD Bank mentioned as the ones whose Bill Pay is not working with Firefox anymore. Now we have to add PNC to that list.
I'm going to file a bug about this and see if the developers can figure this out. My rough guess is that Firefox is accidentally blocking a script or file needed by the banks Bill Pay to work. Maybe through its Tracking Protection feature. But a few people said they tested turning that off and the problem remained. So the issue may be deeper.
Chosen Solution
Someone posted here that lowering their Tracking Protection from "Custom" to "Standard" fixed their broken bill pay: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1455863#answer-1679337
So try to reduce your Tracking Protection from Custom or Strict to "Standard". That's the lowest setting. If it works, that means the other choices were blocking a url the bank needed to perform Bill Pay.
Follow these steps and choose "Standard": https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop#w_adjust-your-global-enhanced-tracking-protection-settings
You might need to close and reopen the browser after doing this. And in the past, some people cleared their cache and that fixed it.
I followed the instructions and lowered the Tracking Protection to Standard. I also cleared all history (history, cookies, cache and site settings) and reloaded Firefox. Upon reloading Firefox it worked! I can now get into the bill payment tab on the banking site. Changing to Standard fixed the problem but it may have been helped by clearing all history and reloading Firefox.
Thanks for the help. Regards, Steve
Thank you for keeping us up to date, development team is very appreciative of this.
If anyhow possible, could you test this again by turning on the ETP Strict and telling us which trackers (under shield panel) are being blocked, including domains?
Steve, happy that worked for you! I asked the Firefox developers to come check this out just in case this was affecting more people. Dmehic is one of them. If you could help him out with his request, that would help alot of people. I'm including a screenshot below to show you where to click to copy down the names of those trackers: https://snipboard.io/pOQaCf.jpg
In the "Blocked" section, does it say "Cross-Site Trackers" or "Cross-Site Tracking Cookies"? If both appear, click where that 2nd red arrow is pointing & a list of things that were blocked should appear. Copy those down for us and share them here if you could. Thanks.
Modified
I attempted to perform the tests requested by dmehic and NoahSUMO. Unfortunately, no matter what I did I could not make the bill payment tab "not work". I changed from Standard back to Custom and also back to Strict. No matter what I did the bill payment tab continued to work which is strange because when I was trying to get it to work in the beginning, before NoahSUMO suggested I change to Standard, I was changing all of these settings and nothing worked. Now the bill payment tab works no matter what I do. The only explanation I have is I noticed an automatic software update was applied when I turned on my PC ( I believe it was from Microsoft but it didn't say. ) Anyway its working now no matter what setting I use.
Thanks for trying to do the tests Steve! That's weird we couldn't get it to reappear again by changing those settings.
Some extra good news for you is that soon the developers will release a fix targeting this issue in case it decides to reappear again. So please let us know if this problem somehow returns. But I'm happy its working for you now.
Thank you for your feedback Steve, this all helps our development team. We're glad it works now but, regardless, the fix is coming up soon. Thanks again.
We have just released an update - Firefox 131.0.3 that fixes this issue. Please make sure to update your Firefox. Thank you for reporting this and happy browsing!