Banking apps on rooted device

Community
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Hello,

I’ve been using rooted android devices for over 10 years. In particular, I’ve used and am currently using /e/ OS, lineage OS and graphene OS. Over the past year, I’ve started experiencing problems with my banking apps: either they don’t work at all or they work very well. Whenever I try to contact support, they tell me that rooted devices are less secure, so they block them and suggest I use the website or the web app instead. I point out to them that this isn’t true, at least for the following reasons:

  1. In theory unrooted devices are more secure than rooted ones. In practice it depends on which apps have superuser access.
  2. Using a web app or a website is less secure than using a native app. Therefore, avoiding the use of native apps on a rooted device reduces security.
  3. PC operating systems, windows, macOS or GNU/Linux, provide root access.

It is therefore clear that the justification is just a smoke screen. After reading this article by graphene and this by the FSFU, I wonder whether the practice of blocking a specific app, for a trivial reason with no basis in reality, on a rooted device could be considered illegal. Does anyone know more about this?

Thank you

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Using a rooted device is your choice and banks support the common standard systems. Unfortunately, you cannot expect them to support devices using custom ROM. You will be lucky if your bank supports all ‘normal’ phone operating systems :grin:

No personal dig, but you seem to be very naive thinking you may have any leg to stand on challenging your bank about not supporting bespoke operating systems…

If you challenge the system and want a ‘private’ device you can only challenge your Custom ROM / OS provider about not making it possible to use general banking and similar apps Mate.

Nothing personal, but once you join the unofficial, private, alternative operating system world you can’t expect support from god fearing (lol), government compliant, big tech following organisations like banks… I work for one :sweat_smile:

So, if you say, I go against my terms and conditions of handset provider and change operating system to an unofficial ‘fair’ and de-googled system which is dog’s bollocks and I like it, is there a legal path to challenge your bank because their app does not like it?

The answer is, they make sense telling you to use the general web browser access instead.

Sorry Mate, You are wrong, they are in their right to decline You their support.

It is our choice to go against the ‘system’ but we need to be aware of the price to pay…

I am happy with it. Just take it easy and be cool!

All the Best!

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At least you were honest and said you work for a bank; your reply reminds me of the official customer support response. That’s probably why you didn’t understand my reasoning, which is based on facts. In short, it’s not true that rooting a device reduces its security, and banks are using that as an excuse. If it were true, they wouldn’t recommend using a website that’s less secure than any installed app.

Furthermore, if you passively accept whatever choices are imposed by big tech companies, and in this case, by a bank, you’d be better of going back to the sheepfold and installing a controlled operating system.

Freedom is earned through struggle, mine has only just begun. In the meantime, I’ll contact the FSFE and then let you know what they say.

Best Regards

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Indeed.

From past times merchants will attempt to corner the market and provide “what the market wants” at a price. Something of an opposite to freedom, but we are free not to buy in.

Seems many have been sold the idea that convenience is the ultimate desire. This is just ripe for the financial system is to adopt an advertising agency as a “sure foundation”.

Being free to move money around through the ether is just a little weird … I wish my money to move only if I put my mark on paper … or some close equivalent.

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Why would I not be honest Alfredino?

And I have a funny feeling You got me totally wrong…

Firstly, You took it a tad personally, secondly You reacted like if I had said the bank was right and You were wrong… it was not what I had meant.

Let’s clarify - I do not deny your reasoning about security or justify your bank’s lame excuses!

What I am trying to say is a simple message coming from my experience and the reality around us, which is: You are not going to win that battle against your bank. I am trying to save your time and to help You avoid more and more frustration fighting that lost battle. And I applaud Revolutionaries and people who want to change the system as they believe in what they do.

Banks do what they do because they calculate costs versus gain achieved and whatever ‘power ride’ affected bank adviser told You about security was one of lame, official excuses.

They also buy their banking systems from companies that calculate costs and do not support Custom ROM systems in their approach. I am not saying that is right! Again, I am trying to bring to You the reality of this world and how it works Alfredino.

Look, I asked Proton AG in Switzerland about Proton Mail and Proton VPN - if they support Custom ROM mobile devices and the answer was ‘no’. So, please think about it - if a decent, private in their approach Proton who do not need to know your name or another email to provide service to you, and provide full encryption between proton users giving you an option to send encrypted message to anyone where you give the recipient a password to read it on proton platform will not support Custom ROM systems as not enough users around for them to bother what on Earth can you expect from your state controlled bank?!

Have fun with FSFE when chasing your case through them, but in that organisations there will be a bunch of pillocks like in the bank’s governing body Mate! They are in cahoot. You will get nowhere through official channels… Don’t make it your hobby becoming a serial complainer as that makes your life miserable, forget people around you :slight_smile: I am joking here but I wish You well and please believe me it is not worth your time - you could be doing nicer things instead of fighting the useless system and maybe enjoy your life avoiding a lot of frustration as they won’t change unless there are millions of users with Custom ROM phones.

And do not tell me off that I am one of those who stand at the side and help the system not fighting it. If You step aside and look at the picture: you can’t fight the system with the tools it gives you - like going to FSFE who don’t give a damn my Friend. I am getting frustrated as well pi**ed off with plenty of incompetence, laziness, control freaks etc. around me, and I would love to ignore all of it and save my nerves plus keep peace of mind.

The sooner you learn it that you are in fact on your own against that big system and try to live a happy life aside of it the better for you. Do what you can for yourself: get de-googled phones, use for example protonmail, do not open gmail account even for a second. I wish one could get paid in cash and not use electronic payments as that is a huge controlling network tax including but we are held captive in this system and it will not change soon I am afraid.

So, if You can get my point Alfredino and not planning to get at the helm of your country or of the world to change the rules for us and how it unfortunately works, You really might do yourself a big favour, leave it where it is, trying rather to make your phone work with your banking app and not the other way round. And it is at the end of the day your personal choice if You want to waste your precious time to fight the bank as its Customer, go to FSFE, give them bad reviews, smear them here and there - to be honest they react better to bad reviews than to direct complaints by the way. Most organisations in U.K. ignore you but once you put a bad review on local trust pilot they immediately contact you! Still, they won’t start supporting rooted phones :smiley:

I wish You the best Alfredino, let me know what FSFE said unless You drop the idea of wasting your time. Cheers!

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A bit off topic, and not against your priority to use banking apps.

I personally do not use banking apps, I prefer to log in to my both bank accounts through the browser on my handset. I just use ‘Mobile Site’ mode on the browser and the bank websites still adjust the way of displaying the banking options to the mobile phone rather than the computer layout and that makes me happy enough. I just do not trust banking apps as much as browser access.

But I know about at least one bank that put in their T&Cs that you need a mobile device to open an account with them as they offer only the app access! Maybe some emergency support over the phone but ‘no mobile phone, no account’ - how about that? I find it horrendous, and the bank is Chase Bank. I wonder if they will support rooted devices, but strongly doubt it.

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Nothing personal, I’m just reporting the facts.

“Those who fight risk losing; those who do not fight have already lost.” Bertolt Brecht

Proton apps work perfectly with any custom ROM; I’m a paying user myself. Furthermore, Proton offers several apps on f-droid (VPN, pass, authenticator, lumo). The ones that are missing (mail, calendar and drive) are those that require google fcm for notifications (proprietary component, not FOSS), see here. So no, I don’t believe what you’re saying.

Thanks for the life advice, but honestly, nobody asked for it. So if you have anything useful to add to the discussion, I’d appreciate it, otherwise, you’re the one wasting my time.

If we’re going to get philosophical and talk about the big picture, I’m also against banks and use cash whenever possible. However, a digital money management system is necessary in the times we live in.

That’s not the point, though; the point is not to make up excuses to justify one’s own choice. If they’d said: “We don’t want users to use customised phones because we don’t like people who seek freedom”, I would have accepted that.

Have a nice day

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First of all Alfredino, I do apologise if I wound You up more in your current state of being crossed with your bank. I saw your ‘rant’ about them not supporting Custom ROM phones and in fact You having some academic discussion with them about the reasons and intention to escalate that discussion with FSFE and I feel I just followed your drift trying to bring to your attention why in fact they did not offer the support. Sorry if I got it wrong, my bad. Apologies for wasting your time if that is what You kindly believe. I wonder what operating system Bertold Brecht would have used but I am afraid he’d join the flow with standard android system on his phone :slight_smile:

P.S. I do apologise but cannot help saying Brecht wasn’t a fighter himself… fled Germany jumping from one country to another awaiting U.S. visa and finally landed in California in 1941 buying a house there.

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“Sometimes it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” Abraham Lincoln

P.S. If you have anything useful or constructive to say, you are welcome to do so.

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Please keep the discussion on this forum civil and avoid personal attacks. The forum rules are available here.

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@Manoj I did not see the flagged post but I understand how @grzecel feels. I myself am sick of the phony post ment to malign eOS. It’s been going on for months with the help of some automation. Almost every new post when I come to this site is by a “new user this is your first post” with extreme knowledge for a new user of custom ROM. Yet the post is always negative to make the eOS experience look terrible. Just look at all the FP6 negative post.

And for what it worth my bank app works just fine and I am in NA, possibly the most awful place for custom ROM’s.

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I haven’t accused anyone of anything. I’ve simply shown how the technical support of banking apps provides false information and that, in my view, this practice of preventing the use of certain apps on rooted devices is illegal.

Instead of addressing the issue, people are making pointless or false claims, such as those about proton.

Let’s not waste time, thank you.

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I guess I don’t get any badge, like “first banned post”?

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It’s probably company policy coming from someplace higher up, I guess if you wanted to challenge it that’s where you’d need to go. It is unfortunate. I’ve recently moved to /e/OS and can’t currently use banking apps for the same reason.

Any sentence prefaced with something like “don’t take this personally but…” can generally be disregarded.

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At least in the USA, neither banks or otherwisd are required for serve you provided it is not on the basis of discrimination against defined characteristics. Them being weary of user choice does not fit that category.

On the subject of security, having your device rooted does by default make it less secure as it allows for malicious software to far more easily cause issues and can lead to novice users breaking something if they start poking, but for an advanced user, enables greater control that can be used to eliminate the fundamental insecurity.

On the subject of the blocks themselves, I would posit that banks simply do not want to deal with CS overhead of users complaining due to an issue they themselves caused, which has a higher chance of happening with root access than “normal,” usage. They also probably want to avoid as much as possible users poking around in the root directory of their apps. Easier to block the problem source than work around it.

Stemming out of the above, you miss the point when you conflate Computer Website Access and Phone App Access. I do not know of any bank that has a native computer program. On their website, they control the flow. Whether on a computer that is fundamentally “rooted,” or on an Android rooted or not, the bank’s website operates on a standard baseline established by them, with checks already in place for common issue causers(they love their JS). You can of course still have PEBCAK, or simply a bank causing issues for the sake of it, but the website is less likely for a novice user to completely break so long as JS is enabled.

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Believe it or not, banks may have different providers for browser based OLB access and app one, both connecting to the same data base, Sometimes those are two different worlds.

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