Is a Google account still needed?

wintertag

Hi,

I'm pondering switching from iOS to Graphene to detangle from US services. Never used anything Google (always had a pet peeve of hating them) and I'm anyways quite frugal and don't need many apps - but what I do need is my banking app. One question I couldn't find a clear answer: Do I still need a Google account to download the banking app from play store? Wouldn't make much sense for me to now create an account while I never had one. (Yea, I know I need a Google phone for Graphene... would buy a used one).

Thanks for enlightening me!

SgtSurehand

wintertag some banks don't enforce Play integrity, if they do even sandboxed Google Play and an Google account is not going to help you. Some don't even require Play services running and those can be downloaded with Aurora Store. It would help knowing the name of the bank so we can assist.

Also check out
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/

teezeh

wintertag Do I still need a Google account to download the banking app from play store?

Guess so. But you can easily set up one with only minimal, fake data.

wintertag

Hi SgtSurehand
Thanks for your reply. My bank is in the list, it's OP-mobiili (Finland).

c86

wintertag

It's not particularly onerous to create burner google accounts for what's needed. I have one per GOS phone. A couple tips if you go that route is use public WiFi, or create it through the YouTube website. That should prevent you needing a phone number. Just make sure to enable 2FA with an authenticator so you don't get prompted for a phone number in future.

With the ability to run profiles, you could toss your Google account in a separate profile only for your banking.

wintertag

c86
Thanks! These are great tips. Giving my phone number to Google when creating an account was the biggest worry and wouldn't make much sense.