Hacker News Reader

Comment by fuomag9 | Hacker News Reader

Here in Europe you cannot login to bank websites without the bank app on your phone for 2FA codes

That's simply not factually correct. You can use bank web sites entirely without a smartphone. Banks supply this option as there are really - surprise! - people without smart phones who still has money.

My own bank does not even use 2FA. I log in using the officiel state sponsored digital ID (yes, without having a smartphone). This is in Denmark.

(sorry about the new anon account, it's been so long since I posted I've forgotten my old account. Perhaps I should use a PW mgr...)

Where in Europe? Everywhere on the continent? Certainly not in Sweden where I live. The major banks here use 2FA but not mandated to a mobile app.

Not in Poland either. Pretty much every bank has also SMS 2FA available.

I remember Poland has a very late cycle of sunsetting 2G / 3G. Which makes SMS 2FA not very secure ( other than Social Engineering ).

Europe is not one single country, and for me that statement is 100% untrue.

The banking regulation is usually introduced across whole EU and this includes new recommendation to phase out 2FA via SMS.

Not all countries have caught up yet, but you can expect that to change within a few years.

That's not really the point. The 2FA I use isn't via SMS, and never was.

Which doesn't preclude hardware keypads, which British banks have been issuing for at least 15 years now.

They may have, but here in central EU they stopped to save costs and now the only option on many banks is having a smartphone.

Why don't they use a third party authenticator instead?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com