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Comment by bengale | Hacker News Reader

Something really should be done about this. The food delivery apps are worst for this, they seem to know you can't turn alerts off without losing a key feature, but then use it to advertise. They should be made to split this out so you can turn one off without the other.

I'd love to customise the alert level for news apps. I would leave on actually important breaking news, but I have to turn it all off because they bombard me with worthless stuff. I want to know if the PMs head explodes, but I really don't care which royal has had another baby.

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> The food delivery apps are worst for this

My bank, which is otherwise great, does this. Critically important push notifications and a pretty steady stream of meaningless advertisement.

What kind of important notifications does your bank send? I don't think I've gotten a single notification from my bank about anything. They do still send paper mail though.

Several of my bank apps will send me push notifications when a payment requires 2fa so I can authorise in app, a much better process than the SMS based 2fa most do.

How often does your bank flag your transactions? I’ve been called once in a decade to authorize a tx.

In my country we confirm every transaction with 2FA, if the site supports secure payments (almost every website)

Sigh. I wish the US would encourage this. It would make me feel so much more confident about fraud prevention.

EU caps card interchange fees (.3% credit .2% debit), so the baseline is lower. US has comparably huge card rewards, those have to come from somewhere, so with 1.5-3% interchange fees the incentive to implement 2FA to cut, say, 0.2% off commission is just not there..

Why would Visa/MC/Discover/AmEx or the banks issuing credit card accounts have to lower commissions? They can implement 2FA to reduce their fraud costs, but they can pocket the difference unless they feel competitive pressure. But if there exists enough savings from 2FA by preventing fraud such that they can offer more rewards to credit card users, then it would be a competitive advantage.

The US doesn't even do chip+PIN, just chip. I have to assume the US is fine with a higher baseline level of fraud than the EU. I don't know how the economics make that work.

And online, the validation/authorization isn't any better - as long as somebody has the card number and my zip code, they can do as they please (until/unless some banking anti-fraud algo picks it up).

It’s crazy to me too. A few years ago, all the card networks told merchants that any in person merchant who does not use chip transactions will automatically lose chargebacks, so whatever in person merchants have not converted to chip are simply not willing to invest in updating their systems.

They've pretty much all moved to chip at this point, at least IME. It's the lack of PIN that confuses me. All the terminals have pin pads already, but whether they request the PIN is pretty spotty (seems to be bank card vs true credit card?).

Not OP, but every time I do a purchase online with a new shop, my bank does this. Also every time I spend more than x euros in one transaction.

Before that they sent an SMS code, I much prefer the app notification.

I have my banking/credit card apps push notifications every time a transaction occurs (transfers, deposits, withdrawals).

Sure, 99% of them are expected, but it's nice to confirm deposits from my employer were on time, automated payments triggered as planned, etc. Plus, it catches anything nefarious (we had one card hacked a few years ago).

My credit cards also send reminders when payments are scheduled or due (1-2 are set to autopay, but 1-2 are manual pay).

Edit - none of my banks send junk notices. And most of them are configurable for which notices I want, with $ thresholds as well.

I started using M1 Finance, and while they send useful notifications about when transfers and rebalances occur, they use those same permissions to send marketing type notifications that you can't disable: nagging me to take out a loan from them or refer friends to their platform. It's obnoxious. These should never be notifications, let alone ones you can't even selectively opt out of.

I get notifications for large or anomalous transactions that must look "weird" but not quite fraud-like to some system.

So far, they've all been purchases I authorized, but I like knowing that I'd get a heads-up if something shady were going on.

Withdrawals using my card. It’s reassuring to see that notification seconds after I use an ATM, knowing that if my card is ever stolen/hacked and used I’ll know about it.

Same for bank transactions over a size I specify.

That’s a great way to get people habitually ignoring the important notifications

Agreed. It seems short-sighted of Apple to let notifications become an advertising channel. It works against their customers. A start could be requiring developers to categorize their notifications as transactional or advertising, but I'd really like the granularity to switch certain types of notifications on and off from the Settings app, or on the "manage" menu of the notification itself have the option to not get notifications like this one anymore.

I get around this by only enabling notifications when I order food, and then disabling notifications after delivery. It's a few extra steps but worth the serenity.

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