My bank is starting to discontinue web-based online banking in favor of an app.
The app also forwards you to this broken page (obstructed by image) if you try to use it in an emulator: https://rasp.tatrabanka.sk/emul (or without "emul" on rooted device)
45 replies
The irony is that the app will just be a wrapper for a webview, with extra data harvesting.
...and civil action if you try to reverse engineer or circumvent the app in any way... because the app's code is copyrighted. If you do it for someone else or make a post explaining how you did it things can get really spicy. Lord help you if you profit commercially from it.
Yay DMCA, in particular Section 1201!
So far, AFAIK, the "must use app to bank" problem is happening only outside the US where the DMCA doesn't apply.
It was actually forced onto the US by a clever US politician, Bruce Lehman - the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks under Bill Clinton, who pushed it into an international treaty, the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Europe also approved the treaty and I assume the European counterparts still stand.
Maybe it isn't so thoroughly abused over there though. Poor Europeans lack the highly sought after freedom (to lose all of your rights to mega-corporations) we enjoy in the USA.
We can still reverse engineer as long as it’s for compatibility for example. So building a FOSS app after reverse engineer the other one is fine. Especially if that bank doesn’t support your device.
It’s still probably violating terms and stuff so they could just terminate your account.
So would reverse engineering and building a modifed version of an app, so that you prevent it from doing things you don't want it to do, be legal?
From what I understand from lawyers yes. Unless you want to sell it or something. But IANAL
I was aware of the treaty and its role in circumventing the democratic process, but was not aware that the anti-cirvumvention bullshit was part of it.
The EU laws may not be worded so horrendously. I'm barely familiar with EU law beyond a little of the GDPR.
The day my bank does that, they have at least one customer less 🤷
If you have a credit union in your area I encourage you to check it out. They often are more humane.
Often but not always our credit union got rid of all in person tellers and now they just have a few people doing a tela teller
Yup!
Good excuse to switch banks. Every once in a while you can get some kind of sign-on bonus for the trouble too.
Just go full boomer and call them for everything. Tell them you don't want an app to do it. Make them waste resources.
Not me calling to check my balance on a daily basis XD
easier to switch banks than sign up for a new app tbh
I don't do any banking via an app. It's only from my desktop, never my phone. If they required an app, I'd change banks.
Only thing I use the app for is online deposit. Everything else I can do 10x faster in a browser.
Time to leave that bank. Hopefully to a credit union
I'd change banks but I wouldn't be using a bank to start with. Co-op credit union or GTFO.
Credit Unions are one of the many things (like bidets, buckwheat pillows, etc.) that you hear about, but don't really know what you're missing until you use them.
As someone who kept their money possibly buried in various hidden locations up until some time in the past. What am I missing out on by using a bank now instead of a credit union?
not a fan of credit unions after a local one was caught embezzling money from account holders.
you can always trust a liar, and that's why I trust local community banks.
I mean, by that reasoning you shouldn't use a bank either because so many of them have fraudulent history.
10/10 can confirm
Credit Unions are the fuckin' best.
Remember: if you leave your bank for this reason, make it known to them and to your friend circle. Encourage them to move to wherever you end up, and tell the bank why. Let's make a pointless stink about it as we get our friends to safety.
Mine did that years ago. But when you change your address, you have to go to the webpage, which tells you to use the app, which only links to the webpage, which opens the app...
Anyway, I had to ring them.
Then discontinue the bank.
ok. I'd like to close my account.
The app my bank wants me to use is no longer supported on my older phone model. So I'm closing my account with them. Fuck em.
How else would they monetize your data? You need to think of the poor banks!
time to switch banks
I believe that this is going to be the standard- like it or not.
Official apps are promoted by many security experts as they are a lot safer than the website.
Some kind of regulation should still be applied crucial banking software shouldn’t be spying software also.
But they really aren't any safer.
It’s possible to provide device attestation and/or passkey through web browsers.
They just don’t want to.
oh god no, we are better off while that technology does not exist. device attestation might add some security, but do you know what else it does? takes away device ownership, entirely, by deciding for you what specific tracking ridden operating system you must use.
Could it work if you had a banking VM? A little annoying to have to spin up another one in proxmox but not the end of the world
I’m not techy enough to be able explain the whole rationale nevertheless to my understanding one thing is that the apps prevent pishing / fake login pages.
I have read news where people access banking from fake websites and lose money because of that. To my understanding it is pretty common way to lose money by accessing “bank” through fake sms etc.
For generic not tech oriented customers app will remove this worry and these people are probably 90% of the bank’s customers
Someone who clicks a random SMS to open a webpage for their bank isn’t going to go “wait, shouldn’t this have opened the app instead?”
they will just install the fake app as well, right from the play store.
"Safer" in this context meaning "a safer bet for the bank's ability to reliably undermine your control of your device".
The app my bank wants me to use is no longer supported on my older phone model. So I'm closing my account with them. Fuck em.
Don't you guys have [flagship] phones?
I bet when you get a new phone and reinstall the app and login, it asks you to answer the prompt in the (previous) app. MS Authenticator did that to me yesterday.
I'm gonna take this opportunity to also point out that a lot of major banks' online banking portals are actual dogwater. I have a credit union account and it is almost hilarious to me how well made their online portal is because it actually loads fast and doesn't throw errors every 5 seconds probably because they hired a qualified dev to make it with a solid HTML/CSS base and not a bloated JS framework hell PWA.
Unlike a certain penny colored bank site that can't even handle my auto filled password and complains I need to enter the already filled input box.