Ask HN: No HTTPS – Why do you trust an app?

You have to trust the organization, same as always. If your bank/credit union doesn't use https in their app, they probably don't have a secure infrastructure period.

If the organization you're dealing with is incompetent, it doesn't matter if you communicate with https, carrier pigeon, or face-to-face. They'll still leave things open at some point and you'll get screwed.

And, as heinrichf points out, you can MITM and name-and-shame individual apps if you're technical.

A friend wrote a really nice blog post about this in 2013. It's always felt like the white elephant in the room of iOS apps.

"WebViews Are Not To Be Trusted" https://web.archive.org/web/20140213214723/http://matthodges...

You can redirect the traffic of your device through a proxy and sniff it (e.g. https://mitmproxy.org/) to determine if an app uses https or not, and furthermore if it performs certificate pinning.

A similar problem is that many apps ask me to log in with my Facebook password. With a browser I can see that my password is being sent directly to Facebook but with an app, who knows?

I have tiers of trust based on levels of perceived risk, and that's multiplied with the frequency of use.