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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

This exists for a very good reason.

It’s so if an app is showing a password or bank account number or other piece of sensitive information it doesn’t accidentally end up in a screenshot. I think there are other places sensitive information won’t show.

Bluesky, and apparently others, are abusing the functionality for advertising purposes.

I think it’s a good thing it’s there. This functionality should be easy for apps.

I’d say this is one for app review or an App Store rule. But we all know those are a total joke.

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I don't have an issue with BSky's use, but I regularly run into the functionality's abuse elsewhere, such as multiple of the biggest Thai banks' apps where every screen in the app entirely blocks screenshots (iOS). Doing a P2P money transfer and want to send a screenshot to the recipient for them to confirm their info before you hit submit on a non-reversible transfer? Blocked. Want to screenshot a promotion's terms for proof or a personal reminder? Blocked. It's even worse as multiple of the biggest brick-and-mortar Thai banks wholly dropped web access and are now smartphone-only. (Or more obscure, want to translate a single-language screen into another language? Blocked.) Etc.

>Doing a P2P money transfer and want to send a screenshot to the recipient for them to confirm their info before you hit submit on a non-reversible transfer?

Why not ask contact for data via text and just copy paste it with double check?

1. On the pre-submit-button screen it shows the recipient's name to confirm, but as in the GP example, if the recipient's name is in a character set different than your own, it would be nice to be able to have someone who can confirm the recipient's name matches.

2. And even if you copy-paste the recipient's account number, that also relies on your counterparty not having mistyped their account number, so it would be nice for #1 to be possible to confirm the name.

What if the app doesn't allow pasting? What if the communications app prevents copying?

For a short while, screenshots were a workaround for blocked copy-paste[0], as OCR (and, more recently, edge-deployed vision-enabled language models) would allow you to copy and paste any text from a screenshot. But guess what, now every other app is blocking screenshots!

[0] - Which is the default on mobile apps, and unfortunately desktop apps too. I hate webshit applications, but if they have one redeeming grace, it's that by default, all text can be selected and copied, and it takes nontrivial engineering effort to break that, so most webapp vendors don't bother.

I want to take a screen shot of the transaction I just did. Can't because some ahole decided for me that it's too sensitive information and blacks out the whole screen. this API is stupid without control in settings of the os

Yeah, I would rather see a warning in that case that the screenshot could contain sensitive information, with options to take a redacted screenshot or a normal one.

Lots of people here exposing their single sign on approve code because a scammer ask them to send them a screenshot.

I mean... "please read me the code you get via text" or "this really Bank of America, please type your OTP" seems to work well enough. We really don't need OS-level controls for stuff on the screen. People can just tell you what's on the screen.

So that means this change will result in a noticeable decline in such scams, right?

Right??

Potentially worse than nothing, it allows for someone to claim they have a fix even if the fix does nothing to stop someone from becoming a victim, thus allowing for even stronger victim blaming.

the solution to that is letting those people get scammed.

you don't have a share button tha generates a PDF and shares it with whomever?

Often, you don't, because the same developers of the bank app decided it's an unnecessary power user feature that doesn't fit in the MVP or something.

Or, even if they add it, there's no way to save the file, only to "share" it, which 99% of the times isn't what I want, and I'm frankly tired of routing through the mail app as a workaround. At this point, at least on Android side, there exist apps whose sole purpose is to be a share target and dump the information to file (and being apps on an app store, chances are top 10 are just thinly veiled malware).

really? I'm not suprised by shitty developers developing shitty apps but i'm still baffled. Surely the bank would be getting tons of angry emails from customers if it happened in europe

Would they care?

They probably support proper export for business accounts. Business customers have leverage. Regular people? They're an annoying but necessary nuisance.

Here's an open source solution on F-Droid, presumably malware-free:

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.mateusrodcosta.apps.share2s...

https://github.com/MateusRodCosta/SaveLocally

Yeah I wondered why anyone would ever install such a simple utility app from the app store. It's something that needs to be developed once and then only receive minimal maintenance which means the usual individual maintainer scratching his itch and sharing the result model works well but it also processes intentionally sensitive data meaning developers might be tempted to monetize that in some way. The curated open source distribution model of F-Droid is the perfect solution to this.

Yeah, I used to have this issue a lot. If I use my personal card for a business expense, I used to like to keep a screenshot of the transaction on the card as well as the invoice. As it's an app-only challenger bank, this is the only way short of exporting transactions as a PDF and that includes other transactions for the day. For a long time I used to use another phone to take a photo of my phone screen. Eventually, I just stopped bothering taking that photo because of the extra hassle, but it never stopped annoying me that I couldn't keep the records I wanted easily.

>This exists for a very good reason.

This exists for a very bad reason.

>It’s so if an app is showing a password or bank account number or other piece of sensitive information it doesn’t accidentally end up in a screenshot.

and also coincidentally if the app is showing something incorrect that you want to be able to verify and provide proof of now you can't.

>I think it’s a good thing it’s there. This functionality should be easy for apps.

I think it's a bad thing it's there. The functionality should be easy for me.

OTOH, I might very well want to take a screenshot of my own bank details, transactions, or other sensitive information. It's annoying that my information is being protected from myself.

You might have amazing operational security but lots of other people don't, and they make noise, which means governments write laws meaning that banks have to refund them for fraud.

So as much as a bank might agree with your stance on freedom of compute - they probably don't want to pay for it with actual money.

Banks have managed to externalize the costs of their own security onto people by inventing the concept of "identity theft", and pinning the blame for poor security practices on regular people.

They really shouldn't be allowed to double down on it.

And arguably, half of it isn't even really security, it's about keeping you in their app. Application interface is the ultimate sales platform, and banks are making extensive use of that fact.

So in other words, we should make even more noise so that governments make laws requiring banking apps to support basic OS features including screenshots.

The OS could draw an ugly censoring block over the sensitive information. That would protect the user's privacy when needed but also prevent apps mis-using the feature like this.

Yeah. I wonder if Apple does something to change this.

This is a failure of imagination for Apple, but it’s hard to blame them.

Who would think someone would put a button inside a “secure” text field and change the masked appearance to a logo?

If I was proposing this feature, I would never imagine someone would come up with something like that.

I don't think Apple cares about apps replacing the follow button with an icon. It's a weird use of the api, but it's not abusing the user or a security/privacy risk.

It could. But the root problem is, there is no such thing as unqualified "sensitive information". The information is sensitive to someone, for some reason. The problem with screenshots manifests when the app and the user disagrees about whether the information is sensitive and who has the right to control it.

The immediate technical problem is that OSes allow apps to declare what is "sensitive", and then follow those declarations unquestionably, preventing any preservation of that information.

The underlying social / political problem is that platform vendors allow app vendors to unilaterally declare what is and isn't sensitive, and proxy their opinion without question, and with no consideration for users and their context.

And a more basic technical problem is that OSes prevent users from modifying the apps running on their devices.

Then it's a bad solution to a real problem. A better solution would be exposing a hook that apps can call when a screenshot is initiated that tells the OS to warn the user before saving the screenshot. This way the user is actually educated on the risk while still respecting their right to control the outcome.

It's MY phone that I paid over $1000 for. Let me choose what is exposed and what is not.

This shows hardware won't be yours unless the software running on it is open source. Asking a company to modify its closed source software might work occasionally, but it's a band-aid and a never-ending battle.

> it doesn’t accidentally end up in a screenshot

Your banking app probably has an option to disable that because it's a legal requirement in so many places: People who can't see need to use assistive tools, and that includes screenshots and friends. If you are using a tiny/stupid bank in the US, file a ADA claim and get some money. In the EU check your Ombudsman.

No, it's so you can't screen-record Netflix. The bank doesn't care about that because it's not a liability issue to them, just fetishism; no way they pay Apple and Google for this capability.

Apple and Google should step in and allow users to remove these shenanigans with a little button on the screenshot preview screen, but resist this because of Netflix et al.

iOS and MacOS have a large number of built-in accessibility features. Taking a screenshot of the screen is not necessary.

> iOS and MacOS have a large number of built-in accessibility features.

Great. Which one is sending a "do I know this person?" message to my friend?

Because it _used_ to be taking a screenshot.

> Taking a screenshot of the screen is not necessary.

Who are you to tell me what is necessary?

Seriously. What the fuck.

Someone who takes a screenshot of something, and gets anything other than a screenshot is potentially being harmed in ways you don't understand, and you say it isn't necessary like you know that or something?

Account numbers appear on checks. They are not exactly secret, and if I want to take a screenshot of one, I should be able to.

But how can I take a screenshot that intentionally shows the password or whatever?

Use a device with an operating system that doesn't think it knows better than you what you want.

You're not that unlikely to leave that feature in place if you have such an operating system. What you really want is two controls: one for "safe screenshot", and another for "raw screenshot".

I can pretty confidently state that I've never once felt that having raw screenshots on such an operating system (e.g. desktop Linux) were missing any feature like this.

"accidentally end up in a screenshot" --- how often do you even take a screenshot on a phone, much less accidentally?

I take them constantly. Not even sure how. I think it means I am “of a certain age” these days.

Now get off my lawn.

i take many screenshots, but about half of them are accidental (somehow it recognizes the "tap three times" gesture whenever it feels about it)

Consider that people use their phones differently than you. I take screenshots on a daily basis, accidental ones at least once a week. Usually it's just the lock screen though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/ykm933/how_often_do...

Almost daily on my iPhone.

The side button (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph7d116e557/io...) is on the exact opposite of the volume up button. Pressing the side button to shut down and lock the screen is something I do a lot. Press button (2) with the thumb and you will see that it is very natural to have your index or middle finger resting where the volume buttons are.

And occasionally I press hard enough with my thumb that the finger on the perpendicular side of the phone presses the volume up button and whoops I have taken a screen shot instead.

That said. I do consider this "feature" an abuse of privacy API:s, and I also often get annoyed that I cannot take screen shots of my bank app to for example send account information, or confirm a transaction, or report a graphical bug to the developers at the bank.

I believe Apple added an entire section to the photos app to show screenshots that were taken.

I don’t accidentally take screenshots very often, though it does happen.

I know multiple people who seem to take them constantly. It’s crazy. You and I may not do it, but I promise you there are people who do. LOTS of them.

My phone has its volume buttons placed in an asinine way, so far more often than I should.

If it's to prevent accidents, it should just prompt user to confirm saving the screenshot with sensitive information.

As it is, it is just an annoyance that requires you to do stupid workarounds like taking a photo of your screen.

Imagine if a password manager didn't allow you to copy the password since you might accidentally paste it somewhere incorrect.

> Imagine if a password manager didn't allow you to copy the password since you might accidentally paste it somewhere incorrect.

... have you heard of passkeys?

Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds. And works about as well.

Funny enough, that's what the big passkey folks want: https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407

Really glad open-source password managers are resisting the bullying and not implementing DRM.

For now: https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10406

Or not: https://github.com/Kunzisoft/KeePassDX/issues/2321

They are imo clearly gearing up to lock down passkeys in practice one day so that you will only be able to use those tied to a Google or Apple account (or some new player). They're already threatening in these issues to blacklist open implementations that don't submit to their requirements, and then requiring an attested client would then become the "best practice" adopted blindly and widely. I think the only hope is for the open clients to fully submit, hoping to avoid full attestation, while not making it too hard to patch out the anti-features. Of course, anyone who can't compile is screwed though.

>Or not: https://github.com/Kunzisoft/KeePassDX/issues/2321

...and it characteristic the level of patronising arrogance in the issue thread

"This is normal. It is not recommended to copy passwords to the clipboard in any case, this mitigates this behavior and complies with new Web Authentication standards."

This does not even invite a discussion. Maybe some people run tight, safe systems and know what they are doing? Maybe some people never rely on a single password being the only thing between them an an account compromise? Nope. Some patronising guy knows it all, and will override what people want to do on their machines.

I don't think they're abusing functionality at all. I don't think screenshotting a skeet should, by default, leak the follow state of the user taking the screenshot, which is what would happen without the secure input swap

"Secure inputs" take many forms, and it doesn't feel like this is abuse in any meaningful way

One person's "sensitive input" is another's "key information".

Follow state is a useful bit of information. There's argument to be made for both hiding and preserving it.

If a dev forgot to obfuscate the password and rendered it as plain text on the screen, then what are the chances they remember to program the blur into this screenshot api hook. Or why not add an alert, “what me to blur sensitive info? Yes/No”

Unfortunately there's platform-level features for marking surfaces as sensitive/secure. So your dev would typically just mark the whole app as such, and be proud of their proactive problem solving.

Doing it correctly requires setting a single Boolean. That’s it. The OS will do everything else for you if you don’t override it.

There’s no need to implement a custom blur.

Sounds like that’s a heavy handed dev friendly solution, but also plenty of comments around this post about why what’s not user friendly. Common theme of People needing to capture the info on a screenshot and don’t want it blurred on a screenshot. The Boolean flag to trigger the blur should be user input. The option to blur can be set by dev but user gets control as to whether it triggers or not.

Good to hear it’s pretty straightforward on the dev side I guess, I can’t tell if this is a net benefit as a feature. I think my opinion is still rooted in user needs and I’d simply expect they are responsible for their screen shots and what sensitive info they may contain. So this feature as it exists is not a net good thing.

Preventing accidental screenshotting is all well and good but these security measures all seem to forget the part where they should still allow intentional screenshotting.

> This exists for a very good reason.

They find a good reason for every little piece of control or privacy they take from you.

Which is why everyone should root the their phone to turn this kind of shit off.

You know you could declare your app screen sensitive and then a screenshot requires a face id?

Whatsapp also does this shit. You can’t screenshot a conversation (it comes back black). I am going Chinese for my next phone.

I can always just pull out my second phone to bypass all this shit.

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