[prmoustache]

you are kind of forced to use somehow google backed products/services, but you are not forced to own and use a google account.

Bank apps are accessible through the aurora store for example and many work well with microg instead of google play services.

[b112]

Installing a bank app seems like the ultimate horror story to me. The unholy tracking must be insane.

You cannot just log in via a web browser? If so, why not?

[prmoustache]

Well in europe regulations have kind of forced 2FA (which is not bad in itself). At the beginning most banks were relying on sms but most of them are phasing it out.

Problem is instead of choosing a TOTP which would have been compatible with any OS/device they favor their own proprietary app with a push based solution. This suck.

No idea about other continents but my MX girlfriend is locked out of her own MX bank account until she go there to sort this out because she do not have her original mx phone number anymore.

[b112]

Wait you need a smartphone to login?! How bizarre.

Paypal has recently locked me out of my account, because I don't have a mobile phone number. Why would I?

I have a landline phone, and, I have terrestrial high speed internet.

So I have an Android tablet with wifi. It works at home, and worked when I used to goto office. I have voip too.

However, there is no mobile service in my area. I'm very rural, so it's fine a few miles from my home, but not anywhere on my land.

Paypal has my landline number, but recently insists I add a mobile phone for SMS auth.

It is unclear to me how this could possibly help.

Should I decide to spend cash on a mobile phone, just and only just for paypal, I'd have to try to login, drive a few kms to town, get the SMS code, then return.

Surely, a timeout would happen by then. Not to mention the entire idea is absurd and smacks of ineptness on Paypal's part.

Talking to paypal results in support personalle who literally do nothing but search a database and respond with circular, broken logic. I was even told repeatedly to login, to open a ticket, about not being able to login.

And this was not just one support person either.

Any push to speak to a supervisor results in a disconnect on transfer.

I have been with paypal almost 20 years. It appears that will soon end.

Bah.

[bombcar]

As an aside some (most? All?) iPhones and carriers seem to support "WIFI calling" which lets you get calls and texts when you're on WIFI (and even outside of cell signal) - I get Ting calls and texts when I'm deep in my basement where no cell signal is available, as long as I have WIFI on.

I assume something similar exists for other carriers and phones (Republic Wireless is build around it).

There are also some land-lines that can get texts, but I don't know how they do it (I suspect they're actually a cell line disguised as one).

[buzer]

> Problem is instead of choosing a TOTP which would have been compatible with any OS/device they favor their own proprietary app with a push based solution. This suck.

As far as I understood from the news the reason was that regulators (or the regulation itself) told banks that the 2nd factor could not be easily cloned. Before this regulation most Finnish banks were using one time pads (actual physical paper), but because it was possible to make a copy of it they had to phase out the usage.