An alert on my banking website this morning:

Under the More Info link was this, which included the statement, that among other things they collect:

the names of other apps installed on your device

And apparently, if we don't like them collecting that info, well, there's always banking in person …

This all makes me feel very uncomfortable and a sight less safe.

@Miraz that’s insane. They claim wholesale spying on you makes you safer. Fat chance. That’s a big honey pot they’re advertising.

@Miraz I wonder if their argument is they are scanning for known malicious apps? It's extremely feeble, but that would be my guess. But it doesn't need to be done that way, they could have the list in the app and not collect the information otherwise. And could be done with secure hashes so they never know what the names are only if they match existing known bad apps.

@peternlewis I presume the bank are scanning for malicious apps, as you suggest. It just feels icky though. And just because they say somewhere they won’t use it wrongly, they’ll protect my privacy and all that, it means they’re now holding info that bad actors could access.

@rpmik I can sort of see their thinking, but they’re really going overboard recently. I wanted to set up a new payee to pay $50 for something and had to assure them I wasn’t being forced into it, no-one had accessed my account, it was a genuine account number etc. A task that used to be very simple became an annoying half dozen steps.

@JohnPhilpin Hmmm, yes. That’s not a good look.

@Miraz banks and cable providers regularly swap places on the top list of hated corps..

@JohnPhilpin Hmmm.

@Miraz I hear you on that. I gave up on using one phone a long time ago because of this.

Fortunately for me, I get a phone from work, an iPhone, which I use for anything that is personal but not private (like banking or health-related stuff) because I figure my job knows these things anyway. For everything private (journal stuff, dating apps, etc) I have an Android. It’s possible to get those for cheap, pay-as-you-go plans (at least in the US), and if you want, you can also load the phone with a ROM that blocks the usual crap that Google does. If I lose access to my work phone tomorrow, I will get a used iPhone (in the US, that’s the “normal” phone most people use for most “normal” apps) for the same reason exactly.

@jtr 👍