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by loisaidasam 2875 days ago
I tried doing something like this, but it didn't work for Bank of America, as their minimum alert level is $100.

When I lived in Slovenia, I could set SMS alerts from my bank there (UniCredit). I wrote an Android app [1] that intercepted those SMS messages and parsed out the relevant bits. Those were the days...

[1] https://github.com/loisaidasam/poor-mans-money-counter
1 comments
djrogers 2875 days ago
> I wrote an Android app [1] that intercepted those SMS messages and parsed out the relevant bits.

Sounds like a nice hack, but at a meta level, I find the idea that a mobile platform even allows an app to ‘intercept’ SMS messages to be a little troubling.

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TomMarius 2875 days ago
Well, it doesn't. You have to do a lot of things in order to allow it that it's impossible to not know exactly what you're doing. I think it's positive that I am in control of my device when I want to.
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jsjohnst 2875 days ago
Actually there are quite a few popular Android apps that bulk harvested SMSes, so your point in defense of its security is rather weak.
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TomMarius 2875 days ago
But that was in the past, right? Current version shouldn't allow it unless user explicitly agrees.
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jsjohnst 2875 days ago
It was permissioned before too. The general population mostly doesn’t understand what they are giving up when they agree to that when an app asks.
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loisaidasam 2874 days ago
A few things -

1. In order to achieve this functionality, the app explicitly requires permission to receive SMS [1] [2]

2. I agree that the general population likely isn't fully aware of the implications of granting permissions for such things. Having said that, I think that privacy/security/transparency is one of the things constantly being worked on with subsequent Android OS updates [3] [4], and I think that things are getting better.

Personally, I don't grant access to sensors like microphone/camera/location to apps that I don't want using them (most apps), and I think people should be aware of potential hazards here. Then again, people are openly inviting Amazon Alexa and Google Home into their homes ...

On the other hand, as a developer I like having the ability to build this, for me, and potentially for others who find use for what I wrote, with full transparency/visibility into the source.

[1] https://github.com/loisaidasam/poor-mans-money-counter/blob/...

[2] https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per...

[3] https://www.android.com/security-center/

[4] https://www.android.com/versions/pie-9-0/

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