Can't access online backup and sharing web site

Question

Does anyone know how to access the Online Backup and Sharing web site from a computer that does not have the O/B/S software installed?  I used to be able to go to My Verizon/My Services/Internet and hit "Launch" for O/B/S, and the link would go directly to the web site for uploading or downloading material.  Now, that link takes me to a Verizon page that asks to activate the O/B/S service, and wants to download the software.  My O/B/S service was activated years ago and has worked until recently without the software installed.  There is no other obvious way to get to the O/B/S web site.  (If it matters, I tried this in both IE 9, with Windows 7 64-bit, and Safari.)
After some effort, I got the help number for the outside vendor that runs the O/B/S service.  They say that the Verizon web site should link directly to their O/B/S web site, regardless of whether or not the O/B/S software is installed locally, but that the failure to do so is entirely an error of Verizon's on the Verizon web site and they have nothing to do with it.  They also said there is no way to bypass the Verizon web site to get to a Verizon O/B/S account on their web site.  They said they have received many complaints about this from Verizon O/B/S customers, and that the same problem has even arisen when the O/B/S software is installed on the local computer.
So does anyone know if it is really necessary to install the O/B/S software on any computer used to access O/B/S, and if it is now impossible to access the material from any other computer?  That would be a major reduction in the usefulness of the service that was not announced anywhere that I know of.  I saw a strong of comments on this issue in the Forums from a few years ago, but the conclusion was that the problem had been fixed.  It seems to have arisen again.

Answer 1

Anthony, I tried to private message you several times, but I kept getting an error message stating that my message had invalid HTML that was being removed, and to resend.  It did not actually have any HTML, and hitting the resend button just led to the same message.
Also, since my last post, I downloaded the OBS software onto my computer.  This gave me access to OBS from that computer.  However, even after doing this, I cannot use the old method of directly getting to the OBS web site from My Verizon.  The link from "Launch" does not work either on the computer with the OBS software or on any other computer.  Rather, the link goes only to the Verizon page saying that my OBS service has not been activated (which it surely has been) and asking to download the OBS software.
If this is happening to everyone and not just to me, this means that material stored on OBS is only available from a computer that has the OBS software downloaded on it.  That is certainly not supposed to be the case, and it would make OBS much less useful.
Again, the OBS technical people said that this was a problem that they knew about, but it was entirely a problem with the Verizon web site that they could not do anything about.