Which bank though? Name and shame.
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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Smartphone Required (digital exclusion of people without smartphones)
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Customer of them, I never was, I never will be.
Based Yoda
Not just shame, people deserve to know so they don't open accounts with this shit show.
The biggest concerns I have with this is there can't ever be more than iOS or Android for smartphones anymore.
If anyone tried to make a different OS, no one would buy it because you need these apps for so many things that just aren't accessible otherwise. And no company will make their app for another OS because they will point out the market share is too small.
And with the talks of breaking up Google, which could really hurt Android, there is a decent concern that it will become a government created, third-party enforced monopoly for Apple. And since Apple isn't causing it, taking them to court over their monopoly would be hard to almost impossible.
The biggest concerns I have with this is there can't ever be more than iOS or Android for smartphones anymore.
The big two consider that a feature, not a bug.
If that was a real issue, I imagine you'd start seeing a compatibility layer for Android apps offered on whatever other system. iOS might be harder because of deliberate cryptographic or hardware vendor lock-in.
As many of these apps (especially banking apps) won't work on a rooted phone, I don't think they'd work on a compatibility layer.
Think DRM like BattlEye not working on Proton on Linux, certain checks would fail unless they rewrite the app to address this, and still the Play Store would be required to stay up for this to work.
As many of these apps (especially banking apps) won’t work on a rooted phone, I don’t think they’d work on a compatibility layer.
TIL. That's depressing, somebody at the bank cared enough to deliberately ruin our fun.
I’ve not tested a banking app on a rooted phone but what I care about is escaping the ecocidal practice of designed obsolescence whereby people are needlessly forced to buy more new hardware to update their software. So I tried running a banking app on an Android emulator and it refused to run.
So there are 2 show-stoppers for banking apps for me:
- forced patronage of Google -- no escape from Playstore (not sure if I’m okay with the Huawei store as an alternative)
- ecocidal designed obsolescence -- emulators rejected
If a bank were competent enough to eliminate those two factors, I would also likely demand the app be open source.
Hmm. I wonder what the issue is, exactly. Just by the way Turing machines work you should be able to make it run in an emulator somehow.
Worth noting that some banks are pushing this transition in a more subtle way. By gradually removing options from their web banking and making functions that are smartphone-only.
WTF is wrong with a desktop and a web browser? Apps suck. Fuck apps.
I’m with you there.
But to be clear, the website banking web access is also an app. I don’t think any banking websites function with static HTML anymore -- always JavaScript required. So forced execution of non-free software had already taken hold in banking. But now it’s much worse because phone apps are more exclusive, more intrusive, and more imposing.
A few days ago I was checking the technological history of my bank. They turned off static HTML all the way in 2013.
What did they transition to at the time? Adobe Flash Player.
Love that you are keeping tabs on the gradual decline of tech. Could be useful to build an enshitification timeline. We really need an observatory of garbage tech which then needs to be cross referenced with search results. Imagine if your bank came up in a search with a blurb next to it (sensible and functional in 2013, shitshow thereafter).
Why use this bank, ever?
The app requires SMS 2fa, so non-phone or landphone users: don’t even think about trying to use an android emulator.
There's ways around that, if you're really desperate. You can get paid VOIP numbers that will accept text, for example. Using an Android emulator is already a hackerway inaccessible to most people, though.
Indeed, and it’s useful to be aware of that.. things like pinger numbers. But I certainly would not cut the bank any slack for their oppressive mandate that excludes people without a mobile phone.
It’s interesting to note that some research “discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in 693 banking apps, which indicates these apps are not as secure as we expected.”
Source?