Why does a banking app require GPS?

vallerie 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

- The UK is an island nation

- In event of all undersea cables being cut (which is a serious threat from Russia), satellite internet is your only option to have traffic leave the UK

- Unfortunately most major banks in the UK have very fragile infra that relies on foreign cloud hosts e.g AWS or Azure, which could well fall over in unexpected ways if the UK was cut off from the world

To be clear I disagree with Wes Streeting on a lot of this but the UK is in a uniquely precarious spot when it comes to how much is reliant on internet access.

	▲	autoexec 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Those cloud hosts like AWS have infrastructure in the UK and a UK bank's data should already be there for performance reasons (see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-infrastructure/latest/reg...). I can't promise that amazon has taken into account the possibility of not being able to phone home to the US, but I would hope an undersea cable cut is something they'd have already given serious consideration to. Cuts do happen every so often. Scandinavia in particular has seen several disruptions because of cable cuts. Either way, it's a bit of leap to go from "We need to jam other countries satellites to protect your banking app" to "but what if the UK lost every satellite, and every undersea cable was cut, and all the local data centers and internet infrastructure in the UK stopped working!"
	▲	Melatonic 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Pretty sure there's no way current satellites can even get close to the bandwidth of satellite links. Also isn't GPS always wireless ?

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nickweb 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

GPS relies on very very accurate timing. I would wager that the timing side of GPS is used more than the positioning side - but I have no way of confirming that.

Accurate timing is needed for banks accepting/sending payments (not just £5 for the window cleaner - more billions flowing every day).

	▲	O3marchnative 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That makes the issue worse as the actual app/device likely just relies on querying some NTP pool for accurate time. Then that would mean the actual stratum 1 servers are not working right.
	▲	ChocolateGod 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I wouldn't be surprised if financial institutions use GPS for time keeping. It's more accurate than getting it from a NTP pool.

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fiftyacorn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Security - checking your not accessing it in UK one minute and australia the next minute

Some bank apps can block this access or request more validation

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autoexec 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Data collection and targeted advertising

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itsafarqueue 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To track you

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sieabahlpark 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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someonebaggy 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It doesn't. They're making shit up.