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.
how would that explain connection to facebook?
It is not only Facebook that is been block if you take the time to read the log you will see the NTP connection is being block too.
The app in the screenshot is just capturing packets. The list shown are connections made during the capture and closed just means the connection is not currently active.
That said, I downloaded Ally, ran that same packet capture but never saw anything sent to Facebook. I got to the login screen just fine.
It doesn't.
OP is claiming that disallowing the connection to Facebook is stopping the log in, but it might be blocking the connection to the ntp server instead.
@14th_cylon
@s38b35M5 @ChatGPT
It doesn't, the implication is that it's not the connection to FB what's making the app not work, but the lack of NTP sync.
Plenty of apps reach out to FB for widgets, or those stupid "share your experience with your friends" buttons that no one uses ... that's why we block them in the first place.
Ads & Analytics, like most things.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/overview/
Wouldn't surprise me if there's an in-app ad / self promotion / community announcements / et al that is managed via FB's Graph API
Is it normal that a bank app tries to connect to meta?
Meta provides a lot of other backend B2B services beyond just Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
You think that's the only way they have of scarfing down data? Absolutely not, they make other useful tools as well that businesses can use, because if they can't get their info directly from you, they can get it from the people you have to regularly interact with instead.
This is gross… but also not something I’ve really thought about.
You better start thinking about it.
A lot of companies have massive backend services they don't really advertise. Amazon makes most of its profits from AWS which is pretty much the primary distribution hub of the entire Internet.
It's yet another reason why folks who suggest boycotts instead of legislative solutions to corporate abuse are deluding themselves.
The implication is that OP’s assessment is incorrect and the blocked requests to launchdarkly are what’s preventing them from logging in. The Facebook requests don’t show a source so they could be from another device.