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This trick is actually used by some banking apps.

They fill app their mobile apps with junk data just to make the APK/IPA bigger. So if they need to push an urgent update, they won't have users that can't update because their phones are full to the brim.

I know two Italian banks that do it, Unicredit and Intesa. The latter was on the news when a user found out that one of the filler files was a burp recording [1].

[1] https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2024/12/20/intesa-san-paolo... (in Italian)



Doesnt this create an arms race situation where every 'critical' app claims a larger diskspace than necessary, just in case, and accelerates the issue?


Kinda sorta, but there's a limit where users will typically install X apps and apps of Y size need Z extra space to update. User content would fill up the rest. I would imagine a typical 256 gb phone is probably over this limit and people who take lots of videos/photos just need to clean up their phone a little more often.


But you still need a bunch of extra space to download and unpack the new version, and there are so many apps that need to share space, and a banking app should only need about 0.1% of a phone's storage...

Whoever gave them that idea was doing a bad deed.


I know and I agree with you. It doesn't seem that smart.

And you can tell by the fact that the filler data is called "burp.mp3" and things like that.


Interesting, makes sense, seems to be bad precedent if everyone follows suit.


It does, but for critical apps (that might have some awful security holes) it guarantees them space.




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