sure we can, the only question is who's legally liable if things go wrong

hmm do you have a link to the product?

And who guarantees that your PC doesn’t have malware?

Microsoft is legally responsible if the software they provide is found to actually contain malware.

Like when you run apt install some-package who says that some-package doesn’t contain malware?

The Debian (or Ubuntu) package maintainer says that. Having an application package available in a distro's official repository is an endorsement of the safety of that package.

This is something people need to appreciate before they go adding PPAs and flatpaks and whatnot willy-nilly.

If this shit is what "ahead" looks like, I'm happy being "behind."

I wouldn't characterize myself as "the GOS camp" (I use LineageOS) I just happen to agree with them sometimes, and this is one of those times.

I do imagine this response is to some degree influenced by their beef with /e/ (an OS I don't have a high opinion of either, but for other reasons). It just seems to me that people see "not google" and think it's a good thing, but a gatekeeper determining which OS you are allowed to use with what apps is fundamentally a bad idea even if it's not google.

interesting.

What i wanted to say: a webshop having poor safety standards, can cost a honest customer 1000s. But nobody makes much security theater there. But for banks, you suddenly have to be not rooted, allow a virus scan, have a locked bootloader, best a face scan and a chip implant too. Despite banking apps using webview too.

yeah well it's all about who carries the risks i'd say. i think that if you're willing to take the risk yourself, you should be allowed to install a banking app on any device. just beware the risk, and you need to be warned about those.

lockable/unlockable bootloader

quality control of the operating system to make sure it doesn’t contain malware/spyware

#1 without #2 is unsafe.

#2 doesn't exist in android because of apps and vulnerabilities

Apple at least makes a good run at it.

Part of androids locking shit down is to try to make their own run at it.

I honestly think we're all just going about it wrong. Make a new physical sim that is unclonable, undumpable, ultimately secure. Have it key sign financial transactions require a pin and have a physical button. If you don't touch the button and have the pin, it won't process a transaction.

I often wonder why physical authentication devices can't just be a usb storage device with a physical read only switch. The user keeps it read only except when interacting to add an authetication with a provider. Of course ideal it would be in person and all services would have physical locations.

Read only doesn't cover what's needed. You need something that holds a keys that cannot be extracted. Ideally, the institution sends it a challenge, it signs the challenge and returns it. You need the keys not to be retrievable.

Because you can't unilaterally just save credit card information and use it for payments. Your bank has to support and approve the app/service.

One possible way to deal with this and very nearly return to the former freedom-to-tinker status quo is to send the bank your custom OS along with a computer-checkable formal proof that the bank's app, while running on your OS, behaves as it would be expected to under the stock OS. With homomorphic encryption, it might be possible to do this without revealing your custom OS, only its one-way hash. The bank can then verify that the proof is correct and then accept transactions with attestation from your custom OS. This would enable installing a custom ROM that can be used for online banking without having to go through some cabal/consortium. The only caveat is something of this magnitude has never been done before. It's a research project for sure. It would take many man- and compute-hours. But it would be very cool.

You don't understand what you're talking about. You've made that very clear twice now.

quality control of the operating system to make sure it doesn't contain malware/spyware

if uou l9ok around, you should see that is not a requirement

I think it's cool trying to figure out a way to do this without google, but it still won't solve the fact that credit card payments aren't private and are linked to your identity. As always cash is the way to go.

Also if you are still going to have a credit card (I mean fare I have one too) why not just use a physical card rather than paying on your phone?

The phone app is very useful for those functions - especially if the alternative is going into a bank and queuing.

the bank's web portal should also work for this.

if it refuses to open on your phone, try firefox and enable desktop mode for that tab

Iiuc Open Source Android has to sandbox Google Play for banking apps to work

that's not necessary but also not enough for it. the bank apps specifically check if you run a google/apple approved, unmodified operating system.

today it is not possible to pay with an open source operating system. somewhat of an exception is grapheneos, but even if you just build it from source for yourself, the bank's app will refuse operation.

and on top of that, google services are required too if you want to pay with your phone in shops.

so this is not something open source os maintainers can solve. it is a result of google engaging in illegal practices which are not prosecuted.

building an alternative to Google and Apple is a high priority

Technically... afaik most banks in the EU also support current non-android huawei phones, which have their own implementation of the play integrity service to lock you into the factory os. but huaweis are not better, probably worse.

I'm sure there was, but I'm not sure there still is.

maybe those who still do that carry around a google infested phone.

most apps already work, and it's been always that way. those that don't, it's because they depend on the google services system app (microg helps here). or they require google play integrity to pass which is not something that can be hacked around, because this is its exact purpose: denying to work on open source aosp systems. it is security, but not for you, but against you.

in some countries it's fallen out of fashion. in others, people are too lazy to bring a slim wallet with themselves and select the bills and coins every time they want to spend

AOSP is Android in barebones so apps "work", the thing is that most apps need services that are developed by Google on top of AOSP (google maps api, notificacion services, google pay) and that are hard to replace because they need costly infraestructure or years of constant development. On top of that Google is promoting/forcing the use of Google Play Protect so more apps need that layer now

I don't think I understand this.
I don't actually want to pay with my phone, so thats a non-problem to me, but when I can access my bank with a browser on any pc in the world, why do they need attestation on a mobile? I dont see why the requirement is inconsistent.

Does one exist?

How do you know that your OS installation doesn't include malware?

How do I know that when I do online banking through a browser on a Linux or Winslop PC? Yet somehow I can just log in on those with my credentials and be done with it. (And please dom't give them ideas.)

Erm .... no. Microslop is not responsble for viruses on your PC.

My bank uses an app as 2FA for online credit card payments. Without this app I couldn't use my cc for online shopping.

I prefer to take the risk of a compromised vendor over all the things google will 100% do with my payment data.

All power to you friend. Nevertheless it's best to be informed, especially when attempting to make a better alternative.

Well luckily that hasn't been my experience. Only time I ever saw that was at the hight of the pandemic our local computer shop didn't.

I think it's rather about NFC-powered (i.e. "tap your phone") payments. These are automatic, which comes with different security issues.

Seems like a strong argument for dedicated hardware to me. Something card shaped 😉

Sure, but it is way more convenient for many to tap the phone, and when there's demand, there must be the supply.

After all, making privacy and security convenient is the number 1 issue in the adoption of good practices by regular users.