> Can you be more specific? I never used WhatsApp.
Yes. I am from Brazil. Everyone in Brazil uses WhatsApp. Over 90% of brazilians have WhatsApp installed. It's news here when the WhatsApp messages of government employees and politicians are leaked. There is no such thing as a phone number anymore, people ask you for your WhatsApp. They even shorten it to "zap", as in "what's your zap?". Phone numbers are just a thing you need to have a WhatsApp. If you do not have a WhatsApp, you're just not going to communicate with people. There's just too much friction for it to happen efficiently.
I have Signal and Matrix installed. Zero people use it to message me. Everyone who ever sent me a message through Signal went back to messaging me over WhatsApp shortly afterwards because that's where all of their other contacts are and there's just less friction that way.
It is what it is.
> Why do you need app for that?
Because the banks want to do things like prevent fraud and money laundering, and apps let them do things like "verify device integrity" as well as suck up as much identifying information about you as possible, letting them know that it's really you and therefore that the transactions you are trying to do are legitimate and shouldn't get blocked.
Here in Brazil I have to go to a bank agency and have them "authorize" specific devices. I'm not kidding. It actually used to be worse. We used to have "bank security plugins" for browsers which were basically rootkits and you could not log into a bank's website without these things installed. Many years ago I poked at one of those things and caught it intercepting every network connection. There's a package for one of these "modules" in the Arch Linux AUR right now. Who the hell knows what that thing does.
Personally I think they should just suck it up and eat the losses. Fraud and money laundering do not justify the sacrifice of our computing freedom. I literally do not care if they're losing billions of dollars, just write it off as a business expense or something. But compared to banks I am poor and powerless so all I can do is try to convince others that I'm right, thereby spreading my ideas.
I have different experience with chat apps. When someone asks for my WhatsApp I offer Signal or Matrix. If they really want to keep in touch with me, they listen and asks. I recently convince few friends to try those apps and we use them to communicate till today. One of them completely deleted all Meta accounts after many conversations about abusing privacy by their apps.
If you resign from your right of privacy and excuse it with collectivism, nothing stop companies and governments to steal everything from you piece by piece.
For verification of bank transaction, I never used any app. Banks business is not built on smartphones and apps. Its not condition for using their services. If so, I would quickly find competition.
Yes. I am from Brazil. Everyone in Brazil uses WhatsApp. Over 90% of brazilians have WhatsApp installed. It's news here when the WhatsApp messages of government employees and politicians are leaked. There is no such thing as a phone number anymore, people ask you for your WhatsApp. They even shorten it to "zap", as in "what's your zap?". Phone numbers are just a thing you need to have a WhatsApp. If you do not have a WhatsApp, you're just not going to communicate with people. There's just too much friction for it to happen efficiently.
I have Signal and Matrix installed. Zero people use it to message me. Everyone who ever sent me a message through Signal went back to messaging me over WhatsApp shortly afterwards because that's where all of their other contacts are and there's just less friction that way.
It is what it is.
> Why do you need app for that?
Because the banks want to do things like prevent fraud and money laundering, and apps let them do things like "verify device integrity" as well as suck up as much identifying information about you as possible, letting them know that it's really you and therefore that the transactions you are trying to do are legitimate and shouldn't get blocked.
Here in Brazil I have to go to a bank agency and have them "authorize" specific devices. I'm not kidding. It actually used to be worse. We used to have "bank security plugins" for browsers which were basically rootkits and you could not log into a bank's website without these things installed. Many years ago I poked at one of those things and caught it intercepting every network connection. There's a package for one of these "modules" in the Arch Linux AUR right now. Who the hell knows what that thing does.
Personally I think they should just suck it up and eat the losses. Fraud and money laundering do not justify the sacrifice of our computing freedom. I literally do not care if they're losing billions of dollars, just write it off as a business expense or something. But compared to banks I am poor and powerless so all I can do is try to convince others that I'm right, thereby spreading my ideas.