A Smartphone and online banking

Outeast1000

I have always used a public PC with inPrivate  browsing to check my bank balance and transactions . Now i use my own  Android 12 Smartphone to do it 

My question is how safe is it to use my smartphone to do it ? is it 100% safe to do it ?

sevenhills

I always stopped myself from getting the banking app on my mobile, but I now have it. I guess millions of others do too. It's a six-digit password, but I haven't heard about any fraud.

I would be more worried about contactless.

Ayr_Rage

As long as the phone is getting security updates and you only install apps from verified sources it will be more secure than using any public computer as you have no idea what has been installed on that even if you use a supposedly secure browser.

I realise there have been some issues on Play Store, but apps for most things you need to do are available from the mainstream companies.

Read the reviews !

oldernonethewiser

Outeast1000 said:

I have always used a public PC with inPrivate  browsing to check my bank balance and transactions . Now i use my own  Android 12 Smartphone to do it 

My question is how safe is it to use my smartphone to do it ? is it 100% safe to do it ?

Nothing will be 100% safe, just like your previous use of a public PC wasn't.

All you can do is minimise risk.

Neil49

Don't use free public WiFi to access your banking apps when out and about. Disable WiFi and use your own 4g connection.

You are ok using your WiFi at home to do this. 

km1500

you can safely use public wifi all data to and from the app is encrypted

sausage_time

If anything bad were to happen I'd expect more sympathy from the bank if you were using their own app on a supported device versus web on a public PC.

GeoffTF

sausage_time said:

If anything bad were to happen I'd expect more sympathy from the bank if you were using their own app on a supported device versus web on a public PC.

Banks typically say that the requirement for running their app is Android 8 or above. Android 8 has not received any security updates for years. I recently saw a security comparison for the banks' apps. Some of them did not look at all good. If your account was hacked, I expect that the bank would say would say that it was your fault, not theirs.

boingy

I think the most secure way is to do all your app banking at home on your own WiFi. You don't really need to be walking around with full access to all of your accounts in your pocket. If you have a tablet or iPad that mostly lives at home then put the apps on that rather than on your phone.

The current Revolut TV advert is a prime example of stuff you really don't need to do urgently. It's all stuff that can wait until you are at home relaxing with a coffee, where you can be fully focussed on, for example, how much you are increasing the kids pocket money by... 

lr1277

As a reminder, your home wifi is only secure if you have setup a unique password to access the wifi. Do not use the default password supplied by the maker of your wifi kit.

Zanderman

lr1277 said:

As a reminder, your home wifi is only secure if you have setup a unique password to access the wifi. Do not use the default password supplied by the maker of your wifi kit.

Unless it is, actually, not a default password but one unique to that unit.  BT's routers, for instance, always have (as far as I know) passwords unique to each unit. Nothing to stop you changing those of course, but probably unnecessary.

Getting back to OP's query, yes, using an up-to-date (i.e. still supported) android phone in your care is nominally safer than a public computer for which you have no control over security updates etc. Nothing is absolutely 100% safe though.    

OP doesn't actually say whether, on their phone, they're using the bank's own app or still using a web browser. It would be safer to use the bank's app.