Not sure if this is a good place for this post or not, but here goes.
I reject outbound connections to meta domains at the firewall. I noticed this banking app refuses to prompt for login credentials unless I am on mobile or a public WiFi network. I watched my FW logs and noticed many rejected connections to graph[.]facebook[.]com.
I contacted their support team, but they denied the connection was their app. I shared the screenshot on this post and they closed my case without comment.
I emailed the address on the Google play store and they also denied the connection was their app. I shared the screenshot and they asked if I downloaded the app from the play store, implying the official app doesn’t do this, but of course it does.They closed my case without proper resolution as well.
Just thought I’d share this here so people know that some banks make direct connections to Facebook to share analytics, without your knowledge or informed consent, and they lie about it when called on it.
It’s probably NTP a lot of banking apps have extra protections and if it can’t determine the time from its own trusted authority it may not allow the connection.
Launchdarkly is likely a culprit as well. Just doing a background search reveals that the service allows dev teams to do A/B testing, enable new features without releasing a new version, and various other “dynamic” functions.
OP is on the wrong side of Occam’s razor
This is definitely probably it. I can’t believe more things aren’t broken by blocking launchdarkly
If you set it up correctly it defaults to a specific flag state if it can’t connect. I.e. always show the user the old treatment instead of the new if you can request the actual state of their enrollment.
They get blocked constantly and my old company just routed the requests through our domain so they’d stop getting blocked
When I unblock the Facebook address, the app opens as expected.
I’m not blocking any NTP. My home servers rely on it (just TrueNAS checks time every 3 minutes…), but I do block DNS outbound to force using my own DNS.
You are blocking NTP though. Look at your image, all the way at the bottom.
I do block DNS outbound to force using my own DNS.
This doesn’t make sense. Blocking outbound DNS is effectively blocking everything, as you can see if your screenshot. Launchdarkly and NTP are both “closed”. Did you look at your own screenshot?
Do you know how DNS works?
I’m going to assume that hopefully OP knows how DNS works and meant he blocks all outbound DNS requests from his devices and sets a specific DNS for his external queries from his FW/Router. I do the same thing.
However, he is blocking NTP right there so who knows.
Try unblocking the ntp.org connections.
I know a software developer that worked for Ally when they were adding this. They all said it was a terrible idea, but were ignored. The reason they claim it’s needed is to track app installs that originate from an ad on Facebook. Since the App Store sits in between the ad click and App launch, there isn’t an easy way to track it without that. But, it shouldn’t be blocking you from logging in.
I remember we had to build an obj-c wrapper for FB’s calls like these because of these crashes, that basically ignored the stall and continued the user’s session regardless
Since the App Store sits in between the ad click and App launch, there isn’t an easy way to track it without that.
How does that work exactly? Does the App Store pass along some information to newly installed apps or something? My company’s app, which I worked on for some time, also uses an external service to track installs (not Facebook or any social media), but I didn’t work on the implementation of it and never really got to grips on how it works.
App store doesn’t, the app itself does, that’s why this thing is included in it.
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You click an ad on FB = you’re ID’d by a cookie or login or account on the device or fingerprint or whatever (probably all of the above)
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You install the app from app store. Neither the bank or FB knows this.
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You launch the app. The integrated FB library reads the cookie or FB account on the device or whatever it can, and pings FB. FB compares this ID to the entries and finds that it was you who clicked the ad.
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FB bills bank for an ad click
Another option is there to be a specific FB variant of the app with its own app store entry, but they probably wouldn’t do that for something this trivial.
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That’s a good question and I’m not entirely sure. I am just saying what they told me. Sorry!
Unless you have a secondary timeserver set up, blocking pool.npt.org is going to mess up a lot of programs that are dependent on time.
I think the screenshot is just showing connections the app’s made, not necessarily blocked ones. I doubt any blocklist would contain pool.ntp.org
True, here I redirect every NTP request to my own timeserver
If they do any sort of Facebook login/auth, frequently facebook will require them to send them data about ANYONE who is using their site.
I’ve never seen a bank do any social auth
File a complaint with the government. I’m not sure which agency, but there is definitely one for that.
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Not in the US there isn’t
So this post prompted me to check my app connections (on iOS btw) and I realized I didn’t have NextDNS set 😓. It connects to a lot of Google domains and others, but not Facebook on my end.
I don’t think it’s that connection causing problems, mainly because my app works fine (mostly) and I don’t have a connection to any meta services. There are none on my phone, and I do not have a Facebook login at all. I will say that of all the apps I use, Ally is the most finicky. It seems to crash itself every 2-3 uses for no apparent reason at all.
That said, it seems unlikely that the app would fail for you in this case just because you blocked access to a service that I know it does not actually require to operate (because it has to be operating without it on my phone), and another poster tested and could not recreate. Not sure if that helps, but may point you towards diagnosing what is really causing the issue!
Something else is going on with your setup, I block
graph.facebook.comvia DNS too and Ally works fine, both app and browser.Your screenshot looks like you’re also blocking ntp.org which could definitely screw with a banking app, and launchdarkly.com may also be the problem if they’re loading assets from that service.
LaunchDarkly essentially just serves up true/false values for services to grab. It can be useful to update code functionality without having to rebuild / recompile. However, any service that uses the launch darkly API should have a default state for their values to fall back on, so it shouldn’t cause any major issues if LaunchDarkly can’t be reached.
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The taco bell app requires tiktok’s server or it’ll infinitely load. Not sure why I need that to order a taco
So I just tested this. I’m not at home so I had to VPN in which is no issue.
- I opened graph.facebook.com and confirmed it was working
- I opened and logged in to my Ally app
- I added graph.facebook.com to my pi-hole’s black list as a regex entry
- I opened graph.facebook.com in the browser and confirmed it was blocked
- I force closed and cleared the cache on my Ally app
- I opened and logged in to my Ally app
It’s not the Meta connection that’s giving you trouble.
FYI this is why you DON’T use the banking app. Use a browser and I guarantee you won’t have this issue. Phone apps are mostly all adware bullshit at this point. Use as few apps as you possibly can. Your life will be better because of it.
All the technical discussion is interesting. But perhaps more importantly, is it time to consider a new bank?
Naw Ally is a good bank.
That’s a pretty impressive reputational improvement for something that started out as the finance arm of General Motors.
I have had them for well over a decade now after yeeting US Bank to the curb. Their customer service is top notch, there’s never been any fuckery whatsoever with my multiple checking accts, and the $10/month reimbursement of out-of-network ATM fees is solid.
I was even able to get someone on the phone when I was in the middle of a casino at 1AM at a bachelor party, to get them to temporarily raise my ATM daily limit so I could continue the party. They would have to do something terribly egregious to get me to leave.
Requirement to use Facebook argues otherwise.
If that was actually the case then maybe. But I see no proof of that.
online only banking seems like a scam with extra steps
