cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15995282
Real unfortunate news for GrapheneOS users as Revolut has decided to ban the use of ‘non-google’ approved OSes. This is currently being posted about and updated by GrahpeneOS over at Bluesky for those who want to follow it more closely.
Edit: had to change the title, originally it said Uber too but I cannot find back to the source of ether that’s true or not…
Why would anyone load an app from McDonalds? You want to give them elevated access to your most personal data for a few dollars of coupons?
What are they taking from you that’s worth more than the discounts they are giving you? Because they are definitely making a profit, or they wouldn’t be doing it.
We are definitely in the era where people think discounts before user privacy. I bet most of people downloading the Mcdonald app do it exactly because of cheeper prices and easy of access.
just had medium fries and coke. many people i know, including myself, use the mcd app because of the discounts it offers when ordering through the app. however, i am under the impression that since i use an ios device and have the option to decline being tracked by the app—which i very eagerly press “no” to—i am on the safe side. am i?
Apple does extensive audit of mobile apps, including limitations of tracking. So the app cannot spy on something you are not letting it to know. But you are giving it a bunch of info voluntarily.
I’d say using that app on iOS is similar to making a food delivery order using a loyalty member ID. Basically, you are letting the company (McDonald’s) know who you are, what is your phone number, where do you live, and what do you like to eat. And if they wish to, they could use all that to purchase your profile from a data brocker. Or they can sell that info for a few cents to make up on that discount.
No, Apple isn’t your guardian angel with the press of a button.
just had medium fries and coke. i and many i know use the mc D app because of the discounts it gives when i order through my app.
just had medium fries and coke. i and many i know use the mc D app because of the discounts it gives when i order through my app.
just had medium fries and coke. i and many i know use the mc D app because of the discounts it gives when i order through my app.
How did you manage to post the same comment 4 times? 🙃
This makes me want to use GrapheneOS more. If the dataminers don’t want you to use it then it must be doing something right.
Too bad it only runs on Google’s phones…
It’s only officially supported on google phones because sadly those are the only ones that are not modified to fuck which makes installing and supporting other OS’es way too much work.
Giving google money once for a device is not a problem from a privacy or security standpoint.
Wish they’d at least support Fairphone.
If Graphene reached out to them I bet Fairphone would even actively work with them to make it an official OS option.
Fairphone would need to substantially modify their hardware to make that work
That’s correct, but not the reason grapheneOS chooses only pixel phones. It’s the level of hardware security features.
Also unlockable and presumably has well working builds. It’s not just graphene, but just about every Android project it there that’s best supported on pixels. Other manufacturers have a crazy variety of locking schemes and required tools. Each one is a nightmare to support.
For GrapheneOS, it’s primarily that it’s re-lockable. That’s why other unlockable phones aren’t supported.
The GrapheneOS install process sets new OS signing keys so you can lock the phone again and get full verified boot. However, most manufacturers haven’t implemented this feature.
What do you get, app/feature wise for verified boot vs. Play integrity app? Does it increase the amount of apps that work on it?
No, Play Integrity intentionally checks if it’s a Google-approved key. Android itself has an API to check verified boot and gives info on the signing key - most devs just want to know verified boot is working.
I feel Play Integrity has a short life ahead of if competition authorities realise how exactly it works. “Anti-competitive” is the first thing policy-minded folks think when I explain the API to them.
Yes, that cuts the list down even more.
In the EU almost every phone has an unlockable bootloader, there just isn’t any roms or custom recoveries for a lot of them.
Second hand, no money for them
Right? Have to pay google for the privilege
You can always buy a second hand one
Someone installing graphene os for security shouldn’t be trusting random second/third/etc hand hardware lol
Shouldn’t trust anything then. They could intercept your new phone and modify it. They did it for switches. But your not worth it for “them”.
There is absolutely no problem with that. The phone is wiped and encrypted when you flash graphene, and it does an integrity check every time it boots.
Hypothetically the hardware could have been modified, but that would take some insane level of a determined attacker to be fabricating modified pixels just to sell them on the used market.
Nothing too hypothetical nor an “insane” level of work. Didn’t Israel do just that with some beepers to blow up children?
It also comes with a hardware auditor, although you need another trusted graphene phone to use it. I don’t know about the details, but sounds very hard to mess with it.
Yes, this would only be a concern for targeted attacks by state actors, in which case not even buying new would be safe.
Thinking about it, in such a scenario buying used may even be safer
And you can even use the GrapheneOS Auditor app to perform a manual verification of the OS.
Your options are:
Apple phone
Bloated android phone like Samsung etc.
Chinese android phone (xiami etc)
Google phone with Android
Google phone with graphene. This still looks like the best of those options.
Or no phone? I guess people are hardcore enough that will be the option.
Edit: I stand corrected.
I use cheap motorola phone with lineage OS, add that to your options
I don’t think LOS has any privacy/security improvements over the stock android?
(IIRC) it’s even worse than stock because you can’t lock the bootloader after installation.
Though if your phone isn’t getting official updates, it’s probably safer with LOS.
(IIRC) it’s even worse than stock because you can’t lock the bootloader after installation.
That’s a problem with the phone manufacturer, not with Lineage.
LineageOS itself drastically weakens security even compared to stock AOSP, for example by exposing root access or deploying insecure SELinux policies
There’s also the Lineage-based DivestOS that attempts to keep up with more security updates, and relocking the bootloader in phones that support it.
Yeah, I myself am using CalyxOS, because DivestOS doesn’t support the Fairphone 5 unfortunately. CalyxOS also has relocking.
Physical access is game over anyway?
Not with GrapheneOS, since you can entirely disable the USB controller from the settings on a driver level, making it impossible to connect the phone to a forensic data extraction device. GrapheneOS also has a convenient auto-reboot feature, which (together with their patches to the Linux kernel and Fastboot recovery OS to include memory zeroing) erases the encryption keys from memory, putting the device in BFU state and requiring the PIN/password to unlock. This is additionally secured by the Titan M2 secure element, which makes use of the Weaver API and drastically throttles brute-force unlock attempts. https://grapheneos.org/faq#encryption
Xiaomi has the biggest custom ROM scene out there btw despite them trying their hardest to stop bootloader unlocking. You really don’t need to have a company supporting unlocking to make ROMs for them. If they outright block it then that’s an issue.
I read somewhere that on some xiaomi phones in china you need to request it, https://github.com/melontini/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame/blob/main/brands/xiaomi/README.md
Fairphone? Swiftphone? eOS? Linuxphone? PostmarketOS etc?
All of these are insecure as hell. Linux phones especially https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux-phones.html
Fairphone also really fucked up: They signed their own OS with the publicly available (!) AOSP test signing keys. These guys really don’t know that they’re doing, and I would trust their hardware or software whatsoever. And no, installing a custom ROM doesn’t solve this. Considering how bad their security practices are, we genuinely have to assume that there are security issues with the device firmware as well.
/e/OS is based on the already insecure LineageOS, and it weakens the security further, so it’s not a good option either.
None of the options you mentioned can be compared to GrapheneOS. It’s currently the best option if you value your privacy and security. You don’t have to give Google money either, since you can just buy a used device, which is also cheaper and more environmentally friendly. Google also makes repairing their devices pretty easy for consumers and even works with iFixit. Here’s a Mastodon post I recently saw about that: https://social.linux.pizza/@midtsveen/113630773097519792
An used Pixel, assuming I can find one in my country, still costs four (4) times what I need to shell out for a in-market Lineage compatible phone.
Theoretical security is cute, but it has to be adjusted to practical feasibility. The most secure computer in the world is useless to you if you can’t boot it up.
Security-wise you’re better off using whatever OS comes with your device (as long as it gets updates) than downgrading to LineageOS. At least most smartphone vendors (except for Fairphone) manage to ship their Stock OS with a locked bootloader and somewhat working Verified Boot.
Is swiftphone its own thing or did you mean shiftphone? I kinda want the shiftphone 8 myself even if they only ship to neighboring countries of mine.
There’s always package forwarding. I’m about to find out how bad an idea that is.
Ah sorry, you’re right. I meant shiftphone.
Lol I spent a week going back and forth with Revolut support in august. I could sign into the app but it would always ask me for a “selfie” verification and every time support would say its a super dark selfie.
Eventually I decided to try a stock ROM and it just worked and I realised what was happening so I transferred all of my money out and deleted my account.
Most local banks here are terrible at making apps, some even require a separate device that looks like a calculator to use online banking, so hopefully they wont follow suit anytime soon
Crazy how the response is to completely gaslight you about what the real issue is
That’s pretty typical when its a low level machine learning algorithm that flagged the account. Usually the support rep legitimately doesn’t know, and you’ll get stuck in an infinite loop
require a separate device that looks like a calculator to use online banking
To be fair this actually provides a very high level of security? At least in my experience with AIB (in Ireland) you needed to enter the amount of the transactions and some other core details (maybe part of the recipient’s account number? can’t quite recall). Then you entered your PIN. This signed the transaction which provides very strong verification that you (via the PIN) authorize the specific transaction via a trusted device that is very unlikely to be compromised (unless you give someone physical access to it).
It is obviously quite inconvenient. But provides a huge level of security. Unlike this Safety Net crap which is currently quite easy to bypass.
In Germany they’re called TAN generators if you want to learn more
Those little boxes are just a bit of hardware to let the smartchip on the smartcard do what’s called challenge-response authentication (in simple terms: get big long number, encode it with the key inside the smartchip, send encoded number out).
(Note that there are variants of the process were things like the amount of a transfer is added by the user to the input “big long number”).
That mechanism is the safest authentication method of all because the authentication key inside the smartchip in the bank card never leaves it and even the user PIN never gets provided to anything but that smartchip.
That means it can’t be eavesdropped over the network, nor can it be captured in the user’s PC (for example by a keylogger), so even people who execute files received on their e-mails or install any random software from the Internet on their PCs are safe from having their bank account authentication data captured by an attacker.
The far more common
two-way-authenticationedit: two-channel-authentication, aka two-factor-autentication (log in with a password, then get a number via SMS and enter it on the website to finalize authentication), whilst more secure that just username+password isn’t anywhere as safe as the method described above since GSM has security weaknesses and there are ways to redirected SMS messages to other devices.(Source: amongst other things I worked in Smart Card Issuance software some years ago).
It’s funny that the original poster of this thread actually refuses to work with some banks because of them having the best and most secure bank access authentication in the industry, as it’s slightly inconvenient. Just another example of how, as it’s said in that domain, “users are the weakest link in IT Security”.
You had me until banks are secure. Most banks use 2FA over SMS. All banks in the EU require a phone number for PSD2 requirements.
With GPG and TOTP support, its been easier to secure s Facebook or google account better than 99% of bank accounts
I literally said 2FA over SMS is not secure because of weaknesses in the GSM protocol.
It’s still more secure than username + password alone, but that’s it.
Sure, but afaik all EU banks require a phone number so they can send OTPs using your phone for transaction auth. This is a mandate of PSD2.
My disagreement is with your last paragraph. Because of this regulation, banks are horrendously insecure. If I refuse to enter a phone number when signing up for a bank account, I literally cannot get a bank account in Europe. That’s insecure despite the user, not because of the user.
It think you’re confusing security (in terms of how easy it is to impersonate you to access your bank account) with privacy and the level of requirements on the user that go with it - the impact on banking security of the bank having your phone number is basically zero since generally lots individuals and companies who are far less security conscious than banks have that number.
That said, I think you make a good point (people shouldn’t need a mobile phone to be able to use online banking and even if they do have one, they shouldn’t need to provide it to the bank) and I agree with that point, though it’s parallel to the point I’m making rather than going against it.
I certainly don’t see how that collides with the last paragraph of my original post which is about how the original thread poster has problems working with banks which “require a separate device that looks like a calculator to use online banking” which is an element of the most secure method of all (which I described in my original post) and is not at all 2FA but something altogether different and hence does not require providing a person’s phone to the bank. I mean, some banks might put 2FA on top of that challenge-response card authentication methods, but they’re not required to do so in Europe (I know, because one of the banks in Europe with which I have an account uses that method and has no 2FA, whilst a different one has 2FA instead of that method) - as far as I know (not sure, though) banks in Europe are only forced to use 2FA if all they had before that for “security” was something even worse such as username + password authentication, because without those regulations plenty of banks would still be using said even worse method (certainly that was the case with my second bank, who back in the late 2010s still used ridiculously insecure online authentication and only started using 2FA because they were forced to)
Transmitting an OTP to the user is a security risk.
Banks in the EU are, in fact, forced to implement 2FA using phone numbers as part of “dynamic linking” requirement of PSD2, which makes more secure methods of 2FA (like TOTP) not allowed
man, and i was gonna switch to graphene this christmas. if every app can just ban my OS, i might have to rethink this. i would use the website but they restrict so many things to apps now…
I was about to switch bank because for a few days my current one (inadvertently) blocked it on grapheneOS. We sent them a few emails and they fixed in less than a week.
I use a small local credit union that doesn’t appear on their supported list. It’s literally the only thing holding me back, I’m tempted to say fuck it anyway. But I wonder if it might work anyway…
- Order a Pixel
- Flash GrapheneOS
- If it works, congratulations! If not, switch banks or revert to stock and return the phone.
What’s the app name? I could install it and see what happens
If nothing else can you use the browser?
I’ve used Hermit for years to present websites like an app, and am using Native Alpha on my new phone.
Yeah you’re probably right. I’ve gotta get a new phone before I can really attempt it, but I’ll at least try!
TBF, this is the first time I’ve encountered an app not working - and it was before this. It’s just because of Google push towards monopoly via their Play Integrity API that’s ruining this.
play “integrity” should be considered malware, any program that deliberately does something the user doesn’t want it to should.
Well, switching to GrapheneOS shows that you don’t care what those companies do, and that you’re willing to fight. It means those companies lose one more customer. The more people that use GrapheneOS, the more companies will be forced to support it.
Honestly i didn’t even think of that. i’ll still switch then!
Nice choice. You not switching is exactly what these companies wanted.
Use a browser like Native Alpha or Hermit, which present a website like an app.
And if you use Bitwarden/Vaultwarden for your passwords, it can be pretty seamless.
This sounds like an antitrust legal problem…
The GrapheneOS team is already talking to regulators: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112539378681400395
Authy has been utter garbage for a long time and if you ever needed a reason to migrate away then now is as good as ever.
Do you have a replacement you would recommend?
I use TOTP in KeepassXC (or KeepassDX on mobile) because it’s fully local and available for desktop.
Well pick anyone listed in this AlternativeTo list but I recommend Aegis
Seems like my time to move away from Authy. Any drop in alternative for iOS? Ideally I could export services and load them back, not manually adding/removing 1 by 1. Even if I can’t though, suggestion still welcomed.
This is actually good, see it as an enrichment of your life. The only sad thing is Revolut though.
As an alternative to Authy I recommend Stratum (previously known as Authenticator Pro) https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.stratumauth.app
This due to its compatibility with Android wear (companion)
Can anyone who has used both Aegis and Stratum compare them?
Oh great, I guess I’ll have to change my payment info for everything now. Fantastic.
womp womp.
Well that’s bad. I’ve been using revolut for years now.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a new bank that’s operating under european law?
Most banks restrict custom ROM and root access devices for security purposes. Same with MFA apps. I get it. From an IT security perspective, restrictions on software compatibility limit the number of failure points. Even if you find a custom OS that is more secure as an OS, it is installed through opening up your device to security risk and there is no real requirement for you to close up that security risk afterward. My company has made the same choice to restrict supported platforms for our services.
McDonald’s app restricting the OS is probably some security decision they made because it’s more secure even when they probably don’t need it though.
It’s not your job to secure my device. It’s your job to provide the service I’m paying you for.
Perhaps WISE? You can use the web page unlike Revolut.
Wise isn’t a bank, but it does appear to be the best option in EUR
Wise has a banking license in Belgium much like Revolut has one in Lithuania.
Wise is missing some cool things Revolut has like metal cards that require you to use an expensive plan, or the ability to buy stocks and crypto.
What Wise has instead, is the ability to have both a REAL American AND European bank account in the same app, which you can instantly transfer money between. Revolut doesn’t give you an American bank account if you’re in Europe, idk if they give you an European bank account if you’re in the US. But Wise has both.
Why is this so important? Well let’s say you’re in Europe, you land a side gig doing a bit of work for a big US corporation you’re connected to through your old job. You’ve got your rate negotiated, everything’s sweet. And then they hit you with the question: “Are you able to take ACH payments?”
Now you have to google what an ACH payment is. Then you have to find out how to be able to receive them. Turns out these are internal to the US. Banks outside of the US just don’t accept them, because they’re not part of the system. But wait! Wise actually gives you an actual US bank account complete with routing numbers and everything. In your name, not in some proxy’s name either.
Yes I sound like an advertisement at this point, but it’s ridiculous how useful this gets if you need to move money internationally. I didn’t get all the hype before I needed it, but when I did, it fit my use case like a glove.
I have wise accounts both as a US entity and a EU entity. They give you EU IBAN and US ACH accounts no matter which side of the Atlantic you’re registering from.
They’re the best bank ive found in the EU too, but I didn’t think they were a bank. Its important because a US not-a-bank just collapsed and a lot of people lost their life savings. The not-a-bank assured customers that their money was safe because it was being stored in actual bank’s bank accounts. This would have been true, but the not-a-bank misplaced almost all their funds and, turns out, they weren’t in their partners’ bank accounts. Whoops.
Turns out it’s not an actual bank in the EU either, they just give you an IBAN number and everything.
However, funds in EU are still insured at 20k per account and since they’re not a bank, they can’t be giving out subprime mortgages using your money like banks do, they have to keep it as safe as possible.
Yeah but if they’re not regulated like s bank then they could do the same thing and “misplace” funds so they’re not stored in their partners banks, and you then have 0 insurance, right?
N26 maybe?
Google has ruined Android by closing it up.
EU needs to step in and force Google to open it up.
While at it, go for Apple’s monopoly as well.
Anyone tried waydroid or android in an emulator for these type of apps ?
Oh yeah that’s an insta-ban. And even the waydroid app devs say their security is atrocious and you shouldn’t use it for banking.
It always seems that with finance we take 2 steps forward and 1 step back. That’s why Bitcoin will never stop existing.
Is this not a sign of the true intentions on both sides of the dilemma here!?!?
Let us go to the end. We cannot afford to carry on in fear of these bans. Let the lines be neatly placed and the sides chosen wisely. If sustained profits are desired, the walled-gardens must come down.Vote with your dollar and vote again with your data. Wary, but never afraid is the motto privacy comrades!
Agreed. Leave immediately to other services, and tell them why you’re leaving. It might not make a dent, but you’ll be doing the right thing at least.
