I’ve been looking into moving towards a more privacy friendly OS on my phones; I’ve been deGoogling my phones to the maximum extension I can manage, deactivating stock apps and putting in as much FOSS possible.
But what other options are there out there?
I don’t want to go full out into Linux Phone territory, as I am not tech savvy enough to maintain a phone on that line, and I have two bank and a carrier applications I would like to keep using.
As I write this, Murena and their /e/ OS seems to be a good option, as they have some accessibly priced equipments and the OS itself seems to be a clean(er) Android.
More people carry a smartphone nowadays than those that have a computer at home. Banks are not stupid; they cater to the clientele and that clientele is shifting towards apps at an accelerated pace. There are a couple of banks operating in my country that don’t even have any other access but their app: no website, no physical locations.
I would leave my bank the moment they stopped supporting browser access. I’m not relying on an app to handle banking.
Very well, reasonable, but why exactly?
I don’t trust apps and the pc handles websites better. You don’t know what background services are running on an app and how much data they are skimming off of your device, even with restricted permissions. Phones are a privacy nightmare.
App support has an unknown timeline for support on any given phone. Do you have an older phone, they may stop support forcing you to upgrade or use a different bank.
From what I’ve gathered, needing banking apps to participate in society is growing more common in Europe than the US, but i could be wrong there.