> I've yet to see someone saying "oh, I'm so glad my screenshot was blacked-out because I didn't realize I was in a banking app". It feels patronizing.

Yes, this. Payment apps, government apps, IM communications.

The other day I almost rooted my phone in anger trying to get around this, before pausing and realizing that this would only cause even more problems with those apps, thanks to remote attestation "features".

My favorite recent case, I almost locked myself out of mobile government services when changing phones recently[0], and it would've made for a stellar bug report showing when "fail safe" design can easily become "fail deadly"[1], with UI view of access and invalidation history clearly showing the timeline of a problem... if only I could take a screenshot of it. But I can't, because "much sekhurity".

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[0] - Well, it's not really that big of a deal. With government services, there's always a way back. Might involve walking to a local civil affairs office or, worst case, a police station or a notary, but there is a way back. Big cloud services, on the other hand...

[1] - Invalidating a certificate prior to issuing a new one sounds like a good security idea, but in the real world fails critically if the two operations aren't an atomic group. In my case, issuing a new certificate failed, and I ended up walking around for half a day with old one invalidated and not even knowing it.

Software that intentionally subverts the intent of the user is malware. We now live in a world where most financial institutions literally ship malware as their primary or only interference to access their systems.

I understand the sentiment, but think about the non-technical user. Every time I use my mothers or any elderlies phone there are a lot of screenshots in the gallery, because they accidentally click the combo. How many people get scammed using screen sharing? It isn't that unreasonable to prevent this vector just to be more safe, especially if the bank might be partially at fault if a scam happens.

“Security” that makes ordinary sharing unusable is often just UX debt wearing a security badge. The right fix is selective redaction, not disabling screenshots everywhere.

Hoping to not sound like a broken record, this is why having full ownership of your device and OS is important. My stock Pixel Android recently told me something along the line of "A security policy blocks screenshots for this app. Talk to your administrator if you want to change the policy". I looked in the mirror and my administrator said "time for a policy change, we're moving to GrapheneOS".

And just as important: Help your friends and family to move as well, so they can have ad blockers, NewPipe etc. We need a critical mass of users invested in their freedom, otherwise its going to be crushed by malicious/dumb security measures of their banking apps, corporate greed ("oh, a simple misunderstanding, when you clicked 'buy' you rented a limited license. Did you not read the ToS?") and police overreach. It's a perpetual battle.

I went to screenshot my upcoming Verizon Fios fiber install out of excitement and got an immediate warning dialog.

WARNING: You are in violation of the My Fios app end user licensing agreement that prohibits duplication of this screen. Please immediately delete this from your device.

... apparently buried in the app T&Cs is a "Distribution of the technician's picture or information is prohibited". Even if there's no tech assigned, the screen with the picture of the grey fake man with a fake hat apparently causes a big old warning if you screenshot it.

[dead]