Rant blog

Crap banking apps

Banking apps - What's not to like?? Surely apps just make everything easier, right?

On a Thursday morning, a significant technical error in the Lloyds, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland mobile banking apps allowed users to log in and see the financial transactions and personal data of other, random customers. One user reported being able to see the accounts of six different people over a 20-minute period. The exposed information was highly sensitive and included:

Transactions from specific retailers and locations (e.g., a pub in Newcastle).
Wage payments from employers, revealing where people work.
Benefits payments from the Department for Work and Pensions.
Crucially, some transactions even included other customers' National Insurance numbers used as payment references.

The bank apologized and stated the issue was resolved, but did not disclose how many customers were affected. This incident moves beyond a simple service outage, where you can't access your own account, into a major data breach where your private financial life is laid bare to a stranger.

(cr)app-ification - crappification , the process of turning something , such as parking , into the need for an app when it didn't need it; in turn making the process overly complicated and deteriorating the overall experience. In the process of crappification , parking is now not only not private but allows the authorities to charge more to park certain cars.
~Hereward Warwick

Crappification is an example of a solution looking for a problem. Before the crappification of parking, all the parkee needed was a couple of coins to put in the parking meter thingy and they're good to go. But now...if someone wanting to park doesn't have a working mobile phone with them there is no way to park right across this borough. Fantastic.
Add to this hassle the risk that adding more and more apps poses. Trusting random companies with your data. Companies get hacked and suffer data breaches all the time.

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