The most frustrating part about this "feature" is that you don't know it's enabled until the screenshot is taken and you're left with a picture of nothing.
That and some app authors thinking they're protecting you with this (referring to banking apps in particular)
The problem is that certain actions should only be acceptable if initiated by the user, physically. Think of the way Ctrl+Alt+Del works in Windows. This, of course, is not possible if you don't have enough fingers for the action, or something; here comes the loophole of assistive technologies, widely (ab)used for that on most platforms.
User hostile UI in the name of security is particularly bad: we are supposed to type unique and complicated passwords in text fields without being able to see what we type, and if we get it wrong, we are put in timeout for two seconds. Citrix Netscaler nowadays apparently wants to be extra secure and shows you the most generic error message if you have a typo in either your password or user name and just tells you to "try again later", so you do until you lock yourself out. It's madness.
Who are the product designers of the present with these single-minded attitude not checking how the implementation affects the life of paying customers< Children?! Most take pride - on paper! - about what one can do 'so easily' with their product, just to raise barricades getting there, using it, or those pop up suddenly while using it, bumping into it like into a bollard ona highway. Or just chain them to it against will! I am not aiming at Android only here as this is a generic attitude I found from organization being so self obsessed about what THEY want that no-one else benefits, no-one else have real benefits - only mixed ones with sizeable drawbacks -, defying the purpose of having modern technology. When the life becomes differently complicated, then that is no progress at all, just messing around. I am thinking three, four, or more times nowadays buying any technology, which is sad, as I was so enthusiastic only one but especially two decades ago, discovering advances and gadgets. Not anymore. I spend my money - and TIME! - on things bringing benefit or joy instead, or on those I am FORCED into. Yes, this obsession of providing non-technology services (banking, bureaucracy, identification, ...) apps first (sometimes only, at least to various, sometimes important details of the use/access) which is a hugely demanding matter on users (choose, purchase, pay, setup, learn, re-learn, update, maintain, subscribe, know and accept terms, charge, protect, both physically and data wise, click away suggestions and self promotions while busy with something important) that it is a very bitter pill to swallow.
It's one thing to argue in court that they should be liable because they didn't provide you with the necessary security tools (like MFA), but they all provide at least SMS 2FA these days and their apps run on iOS and Android, both of which have plenty of security features.
[citation needed]
The theory here is that it provides a marginal security improvement if there is malware on the phone, but if there is malware on the phone then there are a hundred other things it can do to the same effect and you're likely screwed anyway. And by doing this, you also block the user from taking screenshots, which is bad, because screenshots are harder for computers to parse, and that's a marginal security advantage. If the user is going to send e.g. their account number to someone else (for a legitimate reason), it's better that they do it as a screenshot than that you force them to type it as text, because text is machine searchable. Which is worse when that messaging system gets compromised and then the attacker can do a text search for a pattern matching a bank routing number and be more likely to discover that message than if it was only there in a JPG.
Meanwhile the primary consequence of preventing screenshots is to inconvenience customers, which is an actual cost to the bank, because there is only a threshold amount of BS customers will put up with before switching banks and banks are constantly pushing up against that line already with all of their other BS.
But then the lower-quality banks do it anyway because there is a box they can check which sounds like it's locking something down, so they check it without thinking. Which is a great canary for customers who want to know if their bank is dumb -- if they require this then they probably do all kinds of other dumb stuff and it's a strong indication you should switch banks before you get screwed by them doing some other foolish nonsense.
The Penny supermarkt app on android disables both screenshots and text selection with the error that it is disabled by admin.
Fighting against that is insane paperwork and professional exposure for software engineers that do it (since if people get phished, the C-suite will point a finger at a tech lead which went against the "professional security audit").
Most of other posts here are just post-rationalization and victim blaming.
Tbf it is 2025, not 2010, it isnt that hard
I don't want my phone to generate fake photos; I do want it to always let me manually take screenshots, but require turning on a permission that's a little awkward to find to allow an app to do so.
These seems a bit like a scam. Why can't they ask the recevier?
Beyond preventing screenshots, it blacks out the window content in the task switcher, which is useful if someone is looking over your shoulder. This, by the way, is a good way to check if screenshots are allowed. If the window appears black in the task switcher, screenshots won't work.
The idea is similar to the "**" password fields.
It is fine for historical documents, but doing today means you really want to piss people off. And by the way, PDF files support signatures, both handwritten and digital. There are ways other than printing a 100+ page document and scanning it just so that your signature shows up on a single one of these pages.
That's doesn't sound right. On mine, a message is displayed saying that the app does not allow screenshots, and no image is written to the device.
Password fields are inputs. Screens are bi-directional.
They no longer believe in owner control. Either that or they consider themselves the device owner, which is even worse IMHO
includes the ability from a user to take screenshots programmatically in case of need. You do not want third parties to be able to; you want the User (yourself) to be able to.
But if I install via the playstore like most people then no, I don't think it's the user's fault. Testing every single app seems like a big ask but we're also talking about a 3 trillion dollar company. I mean FFS a 1 trillion dollar company didn't even exist 10 years ago and 10 years before that a 500b company barely did. So I think they can stand to lose some profits and do harder work. Really, if we don't hold these companies to high standards then that bar just continues lower and it's a race to the bottom. They'll be as lazy as we let them be
People will go to great lengths to bypass annoyances. Excessive false alarms is even called "alarm fatigue"
You will not have them change their policies if they do not have a good person inside, who will slowly move the boat.
I fought for audit findings because they were pissing me off at a personal level and it wirked. But the auditor did not change their procedure, just reverted the finding. Until the next year.
The people at the top are idiots because the idiots were able to secure advisory positions. They were able to secure positions because those promoting them were either tricked or idiots themselves. This pattern repeated all the way down.
So I really do mean grease the wheels. And I really mean we won't kill the beast overnight. But we won't make any progress towards fixing things if we won't look at how the problems are created in the first place. We'll only perpetuate the problems if we oversimplify things, as that's exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.
Very impressive.
Bilions of emails? No, it cannot, not even store it, let alone process it fast enough to make usable
Maybe, but this is what I managed to gather through a 30-year career in tech, in three huge companies, from IT management to SVP.