You will not be able to use any of your banking apps without first removing all of those...
We need alternatives, this will not work and is a risk to freedom/democracy for all of us.
Switzerland is implementing a digital ID[1]. It will be made available to the most common devices and is open source. However Google and Apple can just remove it, what then?
I just can't see any good reason for it but my banking app has invested more work into detecting any possible hint of rooting than into its UX. It's absurd.
As an early cyanogen mod adopter I really don’t want to lose ability to side load etc. but to answer your question this is probably for the lowest common denominators safety. Anecdotal example - a scammer tricked my parents into sideloading an apk which automatically forwarded all sms messages to the said scammer. This lead to 2FA code from bank go through and allowed them to perform some transactions. There were many red flags during this ‘call from a bank’ and I’d say some blame lies on my parents here, I guess this is the only way to lock down bad actors? I am not entirely sure it is.
Another pet peeve is that they prevent screenshots simply because they can, and it feels safer. I know, 3rd-party apps which can do screenshots etc., but this is fighting the threat the wrong way. And yes, it's partially the fault of the platform, which could just allow user-initiated screenshots. Or at least make it configurable.
Their insurance policies, if I had to guess.
This is most likely the bank just being genuinely nice and taking care of customers who range between very stupid and momentarily distracted.
How is that supposed to be a stupid rule? Do you have any idea how much fraud this stops?
For example, my bank here in Hungary, Erste Bank has announced that the central bank requested that they stop allowing their android app to run on "modified" devices.
They even have a workaround: switch to SMS-based 2FA and use their website (which works well on any screen and has all the features of the app except 2FA)
That's the answer, it's regulatory bodies causing this.
So somebody then needs to say that this is not something they worry about rather than doing the easy thing and remediating it.
Sincere question: do you have any evidence for this?
I don't see anything in the article that backs it up, and your asserion seems to be at odds with the description of a side load capability for "risk tolerant" users. What you describe would certainly break much of the usefulness of side loading for me.
I certainly don't trust Google, or underestimate their capacity for duplicity. I'm just not sure about the outcome you describe.
The whole SafetyNet and "secure chain" things are PITA, eg. ChatGPT app wouldn't work if the phone bootloader isn't signed by Google. Lots of banking app wouldn't work, HSBC banking app for instance wouldn't allow login if Android developer mode is enabled.
Same none sense with root enabled. You must have a check, doesn't specify which one and as long as you can show it works once you are fine.
Offline it would make it possible to verify your age at the self-checkout registers without having someone have to check in person.
In the future (if the law allows it, which it currently does not) it should be possible for you to purchase an item online completely anonymously, at least to the vendor. There would no longer be a possibility of leaked address, etc. as the vendor would not have it. All the vendor has are signed tokens. When they send a package they send it with a token to the post office and only the post office knows your address.
[1] https://www.srf.ch/sendungen/kassensturz-espresso/espresso/m...
Switzerland is currently dealing with a 39% and Brazil with a 50% tariff because Trump has a personal problem with them. It would not be far fetched for an administration to have another states app removed.
I was specifically referring to you saying "Switzerland is implementing a digital ID[1]. It will be made available to the most common devices and is open source. However Google and Apple can just remove it, what then?"
It seemed like you were saying that because it is open source, it will be removed. I simply disagreed with that. Plenty of opensource software exists in the app store.
I'm not disagreeing that they have the ability to remove software from their app stores. They have done that before as you mention. That is a fact.
Sorry if it came across that way. It is not what I meant, I just mentioned that it is open source. ESL...
[1] https://globalbusiness.org/foreign-direct-investment-in-the-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign_e...