Why don't banks like root on Android?

You're viewing a single thread.

187 comments

Let's be real here. Folks running Linux as thier desktop have a high chance of knowing what they are actually doing. Folks with rooted android phones have a high chance of having watched a 12 year old tell them how to root thier phone on TicTok. Which of these groups is participating in the more risky activity?
- I never heard of someone rooting their phone due to a 12 year old on tiktok telling them to
  
  To be fair, I jailbroke my iPhone 3GS when I was 13 because I saw someone do it on YouTube.
  
  Woo! RedSn0w got me a sweet animated wallpaper on my 3GS! ...That killed my battery fast! Lol
  It was neat though.
  
  I'm not saying that they did it because a TikTok told them too, I'm saying its because that's how a lot of the younger generation happens to search.
  Just one example:
  https://www.businessinsider.com/nearly-half-genz-use-tiktok-instagram-over-google-search-2022-7
  I for one, would NOT trust some rando 30 second clickbait video telling me how to root my phone, but you can sure as shit bet that a ton of school aged children are doing that to play some cracked APK they got from a sketchy website because their parents wouldn't buy them a 99c game.
  Those same kids have bank and google pay apps setup on their phone so they can make purchases when they are out and about. I see kids using their phone for vending machine purchases ALL THE TIME.
  Edit: Since this is a meme community, little bit of rage bait for ya: All the TikTokers coming out with the downvotes :)
  
  No offense but you sound SO old lol. Tiktok isn't just full of 12 year old's and hasn't been since, well, probably since covid started. With what a shit show standard search engines are these days I don't blame them for searching what they know. There's plenty of good info on tiktok that's being presented by people that know their craft. The short format is nice too because it keeps them from telling their whole life story before they show me what I need to know.
  The fact that you're just basing your whole opinion here on an article kinda says it all really. I would have hoped my generation would outgrow this boomer bullshit but here we are.
  Y'all are so worried about using things like Google pay but it's going to become a standard whether you like it or not. It's just another way to pay for shit and banks reimburse scammy bullshit just like they do if your card info gets stolen.
  
  Nah, the article was something I went searching for after the fact. I guess "old" is in the eye of the beholder. My 8 year old thinks I'm old.
  Just your bog standard Millennial here though. Started out with no tech growing up, and basically grew up along side and with the modern era of technology.
  As for search engines, I agree, that's why I use a selfhosted SearXNG instance. It's not shoved down your throat google ads (much more akin to what google was 5 years ago or older), but TikTok surely isn't the answer for "specialists in their field", just like I wouldn't have used Vine to source specialist knowledge before that. The problem with the format is there is to much "jumping to the end" without understanding why. You literally cannot get into the "why" in short video format, it's a bit like "and now your draw the rest of the owl".
  I actually feel like some of the youngest generations while "perceived" to be technical because they grew up with tech actually lack much of the deeper understanding of how that same technology works. This is gonna sound very much "in my day we had to walk uphill both ways" kinda thing, but we did actually have to struggle with technology growing up. If you wanted it to work, you had to frequently do it yourself, and figure out why something wasn't working with out reddit or online forums sourcing thousands of technical people. I use those skills to this day and it's a skill I try and mentor into new hires at work.
  I recall once early in my career, I caught a co-worker attempting to perform a change on a server for a Fortune 500 financial company using instructions on a webpage that looked like it was from a 1990's Geocities website (this was probably 2012, so not sure where he even found it!). I slammed his workstation closed so fast and walked him into a conference room. Being "old" doesn't mean out of touch, but it does often mean wiser.
  Edit: Also, not sure where you got that I'm against google pay, venmo, paypal, square, amazon pay or any of those apps, I have them all installed on my phone. What I AM saying is that those apps are at risk to people who root their phones and install applications from sketchy sources. My point about kids using their phones at vending machines was to prove they are probably MORE at risk because they don't understand the hows or whys to what they did when they rooted their phone and installed Minecraft (or any game!) from a sketchy crack page.
  
  If any of the younger gens have a lack of understanding in tech then it's on us. It's on the older gens. We failed to guide them and push for the kind of education that they needed. Millennials, older millennials especially, were kind of privileged in this regard because we grew with the tech. We HAD to figure it out or just not interact with it. It's not like we're just built different or anything we just had different opportunities to learn. I don't see how "watching a 30 second video by a 12 year old on tiktok" is realistically different from watching the video by a 12 year old typing in a notepad on YouTube that I used the first time I rooted a phone.
  I swear every single generation makes things easier for the next and then immediately complains about "kids these days" and their lack of struggles
  
  Alright this wasn't supposed to be a TED talk but turns out I'm passionate about this and the Adderall kicked in...
  I don't think it's on older gens on a user level for the most part. I try to teach the kids in my life computer stuff all the time. I know lots of "my dad's in IT" kids that grew up understanding how computers work even on a basic level.
  We who care, do so fervently, and are often drowned out by the noise.
  Let's point the finger more accurately: It's 99% on how tech companies forced the evolution of computing to their benefit. They decided what "the future" would be, and sold us out to it.
  Instead of fully functioning computers, "Kids these days" have grown up with flat little content-consumption devices that make sure you literally can't understand how they work. Everything is framed as some esoteric black box service brought to you by a cabal of qualified wizards. (Look at Windows' whole "We're doing things for you behind this pulsing blue screen" schtick. Funny how opaque an OS called "Windows" has become.)
  The entire design motif of modern devices seems to scream:
  "Don't ask questions. You're too stupid for that. Know your place. Just put a payment method on file and tap whatever you could want for just 99¢ more!"
  They're black-box appliances that were aggressively marketed to families at home, and these companies shelled out tablets and chromebooks as "grants" to schools, to secure a mind-share of future customers who were "raised on it" and know nothing else.
  The Silicon Valley titans have normalized addiction algorithms, invisible data mining, zero privacy, planned obsolescence of entire devices with non-replacable parts, browser-based-everything, subscription-tiers for everything, no ownership over purchases, and consumption-first design.
  Computing knowledge has become a "magic box" to the point that colleges need to spend valuable time explaining file types and folders. Before college?
  Hah! We're back to the 80's again: Only real nerds have a desktop in the house.
  Elementary schools have replaced their computer labs with cheap e-waste-quality chromebooks where students do everything through a browser. Computing education went the way of arts, history, and music. Gone, unless it's a fancy private school.
  They're stretched thin as it is, and the curriculum is increasingly based on standardized testing on "STEM" over everything else. Why?
  Because employers want a large pool of punctual test-passers to choose from, and corporations want generationally vendor-locked customers to secure future earnings.
  This is why, despite how the world runs on computers, to the majority, emails are space magic. Nobody knows nor cares about their privacy being sold off, and nobody bothers to learn about computers in the first place.
  A "technical user" is super intimidating to "normies" because they know things like "There are multiple browsers" and "You can copy and paste". I'm not even kidding.
  It's depressing as hell. Maybe some of it is on our generation, for not fighting harder for user rights.
  This is why Linux has such a cult following: it flies in the face of this hypercapitalist customer-farm nonsense, and people find that refreshing. I'm happy to hear of more kids using it, and messing with things like Pis.
  In some places there's hope.
  Thanks for hearing me out.
  
  Thanks for this. Well put.
  
  Thank you for reading it, and for your appreciation. It means a lot. :)
  
  You may have missed where I specifically said I mentor new hires for those skills.
  
  Stupid comment
  
  Stupid reply
  
  👍
- This is the real problem.
  Far too many people with rooted phones having no business with a rooted phone, installing whatever from wherever with no regard to the security implications.
  At least people with root on a Linux system, by default, are going to be more knowledgeable in that regard.
- 12 year old tell them how to root thier phone on TicTok
  The real pros learn from Indian guys on Youtube
- Risky for who?
  
  Can't tell if this is serious question or not, but for the end user. Lemmy is a bit of a technical microcosm, so while we might not want protection from ourselves, the MAJORITY of people out there are not technically savvy. So while not everyone has a linux workstation (lets assume 2-3% based on some reporting) Android has an approximate 70% worldwide market share. So that means the VAST majority of people running Android probably can't be trusted to plug in a toaster correctly. This is the same reason there are guiderails on roads with steep embankments.
  
  Both parties.
- The last time I rooted my phone, I used a sketchy app I downloaded from megaupload (man, I'm getting old) that may or may not have given that phone superherpes. You are not wrong.
  
  see my reply to @pacoboyd@lemm.ee
- maybe it's just me, but isn't it quite hard (at least for people not confident doing technical stuff) to root a phone?
  like a decade ago the bootloader may have been unlocked by default and for many phones there were exploits so that they could be rooted with an app, but nowadays you would have to:
  unlock the bootloader by installing ADB and fastboot drivers, booting into download mode and run terminal commands that would reset your phone in the process; and for some phones, you would also need to shorten a test point and for quite a few of them nowadays, unlocking the bootloader is impossible
  boot into download mode and flash a custom recovery with fastboot or potentially with Odin or some other proprietary software (or sometimes you can root from download mode)
  for some newer (including Samsung) phones, you also need to disable dm-verity otherwise your phone wouldn't be able to boot into Android
  
  boot into recovery mode and finally flash (probably Magisk) an image to root the system
  I guess there are usually detailed instructions for this, but I doubt that most people rooting their phones now would be non-techie people who are just watching generic online tutorials. they would most likely stumble upon XDA or other forums that would have proper instructions. and even then, they are not very beginners friendly as they aren't usually supposed to be followed by people with little to no experience with using the command-line, drivers, how Android phones work internally, etc.
  
  Making my point for me. Those short form videos have very little chance of being right or accurate. They may have you going to some sketchy link and download and app that is supposed to do it for you etc etc.
  My point is the people at risk don't know they are participating in a risky activity. (not if they successfully rooted their phone or not).
  
  ah, okay, that's fair. in terms of short-form social media that tries to engage you, I'd expect little warning and for children especially to take more risks when encountering this type of content.
  Folks with rooted android phones have a high chance of having watched a 12 year old tell them how to root their phone on TicTok.
  I was more focused on this, though, because this sentence implied that you could successfully root your phone with short-form, likely phone-generic tutorials when the process nowadays is much more difficult and technical
- I unrooted my phone because Google making things harder every time was just not worth the benefit to me anymore.
- But what about those of us who are running degoogled GrapheneOS.
  
  I think you probably fall into that 3% I talked about in my other comment. I bet you know how to block apps from detecting root too, so probably not a good faith argument.

187 comments