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HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

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Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#61

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sschueller wrote: post #9

That's Google's SafeNet. HSBC picked a level that causes this. Google manages the blacklist of apps. We are rapidly losing our freedoms to the will of these companies. If they decide they don't want to they can even if the law doesn't forbid it. People in Switzerland and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD. The US has started to sancti…

> HSBC picked a level that causes this. Google manages the blacklist of apps

What is Google's rationale for flagging Bitwarden?

Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#62

Post by hkt »

delusional wrote: post #41
jeroenhd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People investigation Israel for war crimes tend to get sanctioned by the Americans. Because European banks don't have the necessary guardrails to block an individual account from participating in their American-facing banking operations, they have to choose between being sanctioned themselves or kicking out their America-sanctioned customers. The real solution is for them to fix their shitty systems but I don't a han…

Not to sound cynical, but what's to stop these officials from picking non-multinational regional bank?

Visa and MasterCard, for a start: if a bank issues any kind of commonly accepted debit card to someone who is sanctioned then what is at stake is that bank's ability to continue issuing those cards. Realistically, the bank would be destroyed by being excluded from payment networks and card issuance. So only very little banks that don't interact with anything American (you might manage this with a credit union in the UK, potentially) would be your best bet.

Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#63

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #61
sschueller wrote: post #9

That's Google's SafeNet. HSBC picked a level that causes this. Google manages the blacklist of apps. We are rapidly losing our freedoms to the will of these companies. If they decide they don't want to they can even if the law doesn't forbid it. People in Switzerland and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD. The US has started to sancti…

> HSBC picked a level that causes this. Google manages the blacklist of apps What is Google's rationale for flagging Bitwarden?

[deleted]

Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#64

Post by jeroenhd »

zb3 wrote: post #4
itsthecourier wrote: post #2

probably because bitwarden has a permission to overlay other apps and HSBC thinks it's malware stealing your access to your bank

But the user needs to be able to override this faulty check, albeit my solution is to never let any app decide what I can have on my device by not installing the app. EDIT: there's also Android Protected Confirmation that works in the TrustZone so apps can't display over that. It was made exactly for apps like banking apps, so they should use it.

This is "protect the users from themselves" as-a-feature to prevent scammers from using malware to obscure their scams. Letting the user override the warning would make the entire feature useless.

Using overlay permissions, it's relatively simple to trick someone into transferring money by overlaying a different UI that the malicious app makes the user type or paste into. I believe blocking access to the app while such an overlay is present makes a lot of sense. Trusting apps from Google Play to do this while blocking other install sources would be an obvious mistake, though.

I'd argue this feature shouldn't exist (because of things like the API you mention) but having a user override doesn't make sense here.

Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#65

Post by shakna »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #61
sschueller wrote: post #9

That's Google's SafeNet. HSBC picked a level that causes this. Google manages the blacklist of apps. We are rapidly losing our freedoms to the will of these companies. If they decide they don't want to they can even if the law doesn't forbid it. People in Switzerland and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD. The US has started to sancti…

> HSBC picked a level that causes this. Google manages the blacklist of apps What is Google's rationale for flagging Bitwarden?

They flag "sideloading" - or anything installed by anything outside of their store.

They don't always flag it. Only when SafeNet is set to paranoid levels. However, sideloading is considered a risk for some reason. Even if sideloading is a synonym for "installing".

Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#66

Post by mamonster »

sschueller wrote: post #9

That's Google's SafeNet. HSBC picked a level that causes this. Google manages the blacklist of apps. We are rapidly losing our freedoms to the will of these companies. If they decide they don't want to they can even if the law doesn't forbid it. People in Switzerland and the EU are being de-banked by local banks because of US pressure allowing them to force any bank that wants to use USD. The US has started to sancti…

>Swiss law requires one bank (Postfinance) to offer banking irregardless but if you are sanctioned you can't use the wire system, no other currencies, no credit cards and you cant use Twint either so it's in effect useless. You can't pay for your health insurance or rent.

What's funny is that this particular jurispudence was actually enforced due to a Russian oligarch (Vekselberg) on a C permit.

I am not sure regarding the rent and the health insurance, the health insurance especially as it is a legal requirement.

Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#67

Post by devsda »

itsthecourier wrote: post #2

probably because bitwarden has a permission to overlay other apps and HSBC thinks it's malware stealing your access to your bank

If Google can allow apps to block screenshot capability then it should also allow specific set of apps like financial apps having an option to block overlays too. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#68

Post by _ache_ »

embedding-shape wrote: post #37
hkt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-28/the-comp...

That sort of sanctioning is world-wide, isn't it? Not specifically targeting EU banks, but rather she's blacklisted from any bank in the world who follows those blacklisting lists, at least from what I understand it. Parent's comment gave me the impression that this was something exclusive to EU (and Swiss) banks in particular, since they were mentioned by name.

No. It's a MasterCard/Visa only (and Amercian Express I guess, maybe JCB too).

So technically, she can pay by card in France, Belgium, India and others countries that don't rely exclusively on Visa/MasterCard.

With local cards.

Re: HSBC blocks its app due to F-Droid-installed Bitwarden

#70

Post by callahad »

hkt wrote: post #15

Ditch apps on your phone and pick banking that gives good, robust online banking. I was cut off by Starling for something similar and had to choose between a factory reset of my phone and my bank. I explained that my phone had free software on it, some of which I'd written, and it made no difference. Apps are a tool of control and surveillance and it is time we stopped tying ourselves to them. Dumb phones or degoogle…

Can you say more about what specific things you tripped over with Starling, and which bank you moved to? Worried I'll find myself in the same boat.

It does seem like Starling has gone out of their way twice to exempt GrapheneOS from their checks, but only after users complained: https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report/is...

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