So, out of curiosity, since I am on a Mac and using Safari as my main browser, I thought I'd see what was in the offending file. I have a in excess of 20 tabs open at the moment, a good deal of them to authenticated sites via https.

A quick test in Terminal like so:

$ strings LastSession.plist | grep -i pass

Produced 8 lines that matched, of which 6 matched on the word "passive" and the last two were urls that contained the word "ChangePassword". A more thorough search through the file did not produce any login credentials or passwords.

I should point out this is with the latest release version of Safari 7.0 (9537.71)

SWIFT is used by major banks in Australia too for various inter-bank transactions. It wouldn't surprise me if other countries also use the SWIFT systems.

Considering that most modern democratic nations in the western world tend to subscribe to the free-market capitalistic world-view, I really don't understand how mobile carriers get away with these exclusivity deals. Not only are they tantamount to a monopoly in a particular market, but they constitute collusion between the manufacturer and the carrier.
Where are the consumer watchdogs ? Where are the anti-competition commissions ? Why isn't something being done about this anti-competitive behaviour ?