Where I bank is sensitive information. It has value, most especially to debt collectors, hackers, and adversaries. Hackers would love to have that info not necessarily to attack the acct but to write a convincing ransom demand. Google ties downloads to identities. The app can only be exclusively jailed in a walled garden if the source code is secret (and it is).
@resist1984 You misunderstood my pun. You and I won't be using Play, right? So with neither the source being available, nor the app outside Play – well, wasn't that effectively keeping us from using it? Why would we install closed source, and then even from Play? We wouldn't. So: it worked. And we didn't even come into the temptation of doing something that insecure as "banking on the smartphone using a tracker-ridden app". Win-Win 🤪
@IzzyOnDroid It works against us b/c we are a negligible minority. The bank can marginalize us & they don't even notice b/c the masses are onboard. *All* of my banks have apps exclusively in Playstore & Apple's store. One of my banks has gradually removing web features to push ppl to the phone.
@IzzyOnDroid Another one of my banks has wholly discontinued the web, so the phone app is the /only/ means for access. This happened after I moved away from the bank, so I can't even transfer my money out. Since consumers are happy to accept this, the banks are fine with cutting us off. As our options shrink, the unwitting masses are being exploited. It's lose-lose.
@resist1984 I have never ever used any banking app on the phone. Neither do I use banking via website. They nearly always have HBCI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBCI) because their "big customers" use that. And for what I cannot do that way, I give them phone calls. Or send in a fax. Worked fine so far. But that might be special for Germany…
@IzzyOnDroid HBCI is specific to Germany. It's great that it caught on there. There is also a German bank that uses PGP, so you can get encrypted statements via email w/no effort on your part. Outside of Germany it's a disaster. And even in Germany, I'll bet transfers by phone/fax or over the counter have a fee (this is the case for the phone-app-only bank).
@resist1984 @IzzyOnDroid It *is* a German standard, now called FinTS. But, it's just an xml based messaging standard, a bank should be able to adopt it. And it's published, otherwise Olaf Willuhn couldn't have written the Java open source finance framework Jameica and the PC banking app Hibiscus which produces messages my bank accepts. Though they hate that I don't buy their prog. 😋 https://willuhn.de/ Couldn't an NGO work politically for a standard, or found a co-operative bank?
@mupan @IzzyOnDroid In the US, banks don't follow standards. They do what they want. You would think that's a recipe for innovation, but no, they basically just mirror what the bigger banks are doing, which is totally bent on walled gardens w/propietary UIs. There is an extreme aversion for risk in US banking. No bank wants to try something that's different that hasn't been done before.
@IzzyOnDroid @mupan You might expect the credit union that is #FSF endorsed to be doing something that respects your freedom, but no, they're no different than other CUs. They outsource the app which ends up being the same proprietary Google playstore that other banks use only with a different skin, and custom logos
