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spwa4 4 hours ago

Oh I see your confusion. It is not trying to prove it's not cheating with the UI (or remote control, or ...) to the owner of the phone. It's proving to the owner of the website (or app, or SIM, or ...) that it's really the user agreeing to the contract on the screen. Or, more to the point, it's proving it to courts after the fact so they'll convict the owner of the phone rather than the business or government.

The scenario it would prevent is that a government gets a filled in form with someone requesting unemployment benefits, or reimbursement for a medical procedure on account X ... and then government finds out after payment, later, in court, that the owner of the phone never agreed to it and it needs to pay it out again (because the claim, true or not, that a scammer initiated the payment agreement in some way rather than the owner). Same for business and agreeing to a loan and ...

It is NOT to protect you, the owner of the phone, against scammers (it does not really do that at all), it is to protect companies and especially governments AGAINST the owner of the phone. It is a way to fire most EU government employees by allowing automation that currently can't work because you can't legally trust phone and internet automation to be binding in court.

GoblinSlayer 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you imply that google can prove such a thing or it's just a security theater for (((compliance)))? AFAIK attestation attests hardware, not software, but hardware attestation is self contained and doesn't require any remote cartel permission, cf yubikey attestation.

spwa4 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The EU is trying to make a standard that courts will enforce because EU politicians (the commission, not parliament) really want that. But all EU countries are trying to save cash without touching what's causing the money problem (that would be pensions, there is no way in hell EU governments can spend what's required to keep pensions going as is even in 2026. In the past they spent all the pension money instead of investing and now they have to start paying it back, except they can't. And if they touch pensions ... well there's a French joke. It goes something like this "One of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century is that you can see Paris from space. Look there it is, that flame right there ...")

So they're just going to use the Apple/Google standards and declare the job done. So it's theater from all sides. Politicians will pretend this is a good solution because they don't want to spend real money, and they really want to tempt EU kids to get loans on their smartphones because, you know, in the EU you're protected from companies exploiting you. Of course, that just means governments will have to do it instead.