Revolutionary Information

Here is the rule that should be compulsory: no bank may let a texted code be the only second check on a login or payment. That is an SMS OTP ban, and four markets already enforce one. Britain and the US only advise it. The objection, that a ban shuts out people without smartphones, is answered in the US government's own identity rulebook.

Picture what it prevents. A fraudster talks a mobile shop into moving your number to a new SIM, your phone loses signal, and your bank's next code lands in their hand.

Why is SMS OTP not secure enough for bank logins?

A texted code proves only that someone controls your phone number, and both the number and the code can be taken from you without touching your handset, through a SIM swap or a fake login page.

NIST SP 800-63B-4, the US federal identity guideline dated August 2025, says out-of-band authentication "is not phishing-resistant": type a texted code into a fake bank page and the attacker relays it, however fast you act. Telling people to be careful with codes is outdated advice.

It also classes SMS codes as "restricted" and tells services to check for SIM changes first. Cifas's Fraudscape 2025 report, published 7 May 2025, found unauthorised UK SIM swaps rose 1,055% in 2024; each swap hands the victim's bank codes to someone else.

Four numbers decide whether a ban is practical. Two come from that Cifas release; two are our arithmetic from the UAE and NIST documents.

The cost card kills the banks' usual excuse. NIST permits exportable keys at AAL2, its middle assurance level, and bars syncable authenticators only at AAL3, so on our reading a synced passkey on your phone clears the bar.

Britain already legislates security floors when advice fails, as its ban on default passwords in connected devices shows, and NIST is extending identity rules to AI agents that log in on your behalf. Bank logins remain the gap.

Which countries have made an SMS OTP ban law?

Four markets in our compilation compel banks to move customers off texted codes, namely the UAE, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, while the UK and the US still treat the switch as advice rather than law.

Singapore's date is from the Monetary Authority of Singapore's 9 July 2024 release; the others are as reported by Newsonair, Bernama and the Daily Tribune. Britain's NCSC said on 23 April 2026 that passkeys "should now be consumers' first choice of login", but set banks no date.

The UAE finished inside one UK financial year; the Philippines, whose circular dates to May 2025, gave banks about 13 months. Our call: a UK regulator could set a 12-to-18-month deadline, asking nothing the Gulf and Southeast Asia have not already done.

Worked example: assume six logins: current account, savings, credit card, PayPal, pension and email. Four (current account, credit card, PayPal, email) accept a texted code alone. One SIM swap reaches 4 of 6, two thirds. Move email and current account to passkeys: 4 minus 2 leaves 2 of 6, one third, halving your exposure.

Now do your own one-swap count: list your money and email logins and count those that accept a text code alone. That number, found in under a minute, is your exposure today.

Would banning text codes lock out people without smartphones?

No, a ban written NIST's way removes the texted code as a sole factor while requiring services to keep other authenticator types open to every customer, so nobody depends on a smartphone.

NIST requires that "alternative authenticator types are available to all subscribers" and that verifiers "SHALL offer at least one phishing-resistant authentication option at AAL2". Texts survive as one route, never the only one. But SP 800-63 binds US federal agencies, not private banks.

Hardware is the fairer objection: passkeys need a phone that still gets updates, which is why we argued devices should print their end-of-support date at the point of sale. Recovery is the real grey area. If a lost phone means the bank lets you back in by text, the weakness returns by the side door. Our view, only an opinion: the fallback should be slower, not weaker (a branch visit, say, or frankly anything a phone shop cannot redirect).

Watch for these:

• Silent fallbacks: some passkey apps still accept a text via "try another way".
• Email resets: email recovered by text undoes your passkeys.
• Lockout: with no second device or backup codes, removing texts can lock you out.
• Number ports: ask your network what it checks before moving your number.

SMS codes should be banned as the sole second factor for UK bank logins, with a deadline: the markets that did it finished in about a year, and alternatives, not texts, protect people without smartphones. Until then, set the rule yourself this week: turn on a passkey or in-app approval in your bank's app, switch off the text-only route, then do the same for your email. No second device or backup codes? Keep the text option until you have one. The NCSC's passkeys guide (undated, retrieved 23 October 2026) shows how.

UK law already requires every connectable device to publish its end of support date. The objection is that a web page is enough for anyone who cares. It is not, because the buyer decides at the till, and that date sits where the buyer is least likely to look. Every connected device should print it at the point of sale.

Why the end of support date stays hidden

The end of support date stays hidden because the UK rule asks makers to publish it on a web page, not to show it in the shop, so a buyer at the shelf sees nothing the rule requires.

The UK product security regime came into force on 29 April 2024. Schedule 1, paragraph 3 says a maker must state the minimum security update period along with an end date, published clearly, without a request, free, and in English. Read that closely and the box is absent. So is the shelf. The buyer gets the date only from a page they must first think to open.

Ask who carries the cost of this gap. The maker has had two and a half years to comply, yet the shopper pays for the uncertainty at the till. A date that arrives after the purchase is a date the buyer cannot use to choose.

Four figures frame the gap, and each one answers a question a buyer has at the shelf.

Read the cards together. The compliance window is long and the conditions are many, yet the place a shopper stands appears in none of them. The 2.5 years is our own arithmetic from the April 2024 start date to October 2026, not a figure any regulator published. The end date is required, and still not required where it would change a purchase.

Does a device maker have to tell me when support ends?

Yes, if the product is a connectable device sold in the UK, the maker must state the minimum security update period together with an end date, but the law does not say where you will see it. That answer is the whole legal question in one line.

Schedule 1 paragraph 3 pairs the period with the date, which is the number a shopper needs. It does not fix the place, so the maker chooses it. For the same design in another rule, our piece on how the default password ban treats labels shows a floor set by law with the packaging left to the seller.

What is the minimum security update period under UK law?

Under the UK regime, the minimum security update period is the shortest support commitment the maker states for a connectable product, and it must come with an end date. The law makes the maker state it, not promise any particular length.

The figure belongs to the maker, not the regulator. Two phones sold side by side can carry very different commitments, and both can be lawful. That is the reason to compare the stated period rather than assume a standard. If you buy from the EU, the clock runs faster, as our note on the Cyber Resilience Act reporting deadline explains.

How long will my phone get security updates?

It depends on the period the maker has stated, which the law requires them to publish alongside an end date, and that figure can differ from one model to the next in the same brand range. Check the product page for that date before you buy, because the box will not tell you.

Two rules of thumb follow. Read the end date rather than the marketing, and when the page gives no date, treat the product as one with no promised support.

Which situation are you in?

The right step depends on whether you are buying a phone, a connected car part or something sold with no UK page at all, and the table sets out what to do in each case.

Scenarios matter because the rule treats a phone on a UK shelf differently from a car head unit, and the buyer needs to know which one is in front of them.

The default row matters most. A product with no date gives you no promise to rely on, and that is worth a question to the seller before you pay.

Where the rule runs out

The end-date rule has gaps, because some products sit on an exception list, a car carve-out is still being drafted, and a seller with no UK page leaves the buyer with nothing to check.

Schedule 3 lists excepted products, and automotive is expected to be carved out by a statutory instrument that is not yet in force. A connected car head unit can therefore fall outside the rule, and the buyer cannot tell which list applies from the showroom floor. Disclosure is thin elsewhere too, as our note on how few top domains publish a security.txt file shows.

• Check whether the product sits on the Schedule 3 exception list before relying on a date.
• Ask for the security update period in writing if the product page shows none.

Make the date a condition of the sale. If the product page shows no end date by the time you reach the till, ask the seller for it in writing, and walk away if they cannot give one this week.

Every company that sells software or a connected device should be legally required to publish where a stranger can report a security bug, and to promise someone will read it. The cheapest form is a plain text file called security.txt, and only 1.25% of the top million domains have one, per a URIports scan on 24 January 2025. On roughly 98 of every 100 big sites, a researcher who spots a hole has nowhere to send it.

Why should security.txt be compulsory?

A security bug report is only useful if the right person receives it, so a public, monitored contact turns a stranger's warning into a fix, while a voluntary one leaves most sites silent.

The format is simple. RFC 9116, the 2022 internet standard for the file, asks for a contact, an expiry date and an optional policy link. The CRA's 24-hour reporting duty assumes a vendor hears about the bug first: before a vendor can tell regulators within a day, someone has to be able to tell the vendor.

Neef, Schlunke (TU Berlin) and Hennig (KIT), in a paper posted to arXiv in June 2026, tracked the 40 largest German listed firms from 2023 to January 2025: adoption of the file or a formal disclosure programme went from half the group to nearly all of it. One country, 40 firms and no proof of cause, but firms plainly move when a deadline is visible.

Voluntary effort is not nothing. By my arithmetic from URIports' two scans, domains with the file rose from 6,816 in April 2024 to 12,510 in January 2025, roughly 84% in nine months. I still disagree that good practice will spread alone: most sites stay silent and attackers do not wait. The UK wrote the duty into law with its default-password ban for connected devices instead of hoping.

Four figures test whether a bare file does the job: the European Commission's CRA page sets the dates, the TU Berlin and KIT paper sampled security mailboxes, and URIports checked the files themselves.

The bounce figure is the one I would show a regulator. The sample was small, 26 generic security addresses, so it is a warning light rather than a rate. Still, a finder whose email errors out has done everything asked; the failure sits with the company, and only a duty to acknowledge, as UK law now sets, closes it.

Is a vulnerability disclosure policy required by law?

It depends on where you sell: UK law already requires consumer-device makers to publish a reporting contact, EU law will require a coordinated disclosure policy from December 2027, and US federal law requires it only of agencies.

Schedule 1, paragraph 2 of SI 2023/1007 makes the UK maker of a relevant connectable product publish a contact plus timings for acknowledgement and status updates, free and in English (as of 2024). The EU's Cyber Resilience Act, Regulation 2024/2847, requires in Annex I, Part II, point 5 a policy on coordinated vulnerability disclosure; the European Commission's CRA page gives the dates (checked 14 October 2026). CISA's Binding Operational Directive 20-01 applies the idea to US federal agencies only (as of 2020).

The UK and EU put the duty on the people who profit from the product; the US puts it on its own civil servants and leaves the vendors it buys from to volunteer. My view: that is backwards, because unanswered reports pile up in the market, not in one agency's inbox.

What goes wrong when a file is all you ask for?

A file proves only that someone typed a few lines once: a published, unmaintained one can point to nobody, which is why the rule must demand a working, answered channel rather than a text file.

RFC 9116 makes the expiry date a required field, yet URIports found 45% of files carry no Expires line and another 13% had already expired. Fewer than half follow the standard, so by my arithmetic roughly one top-million domain in 180 publishes a file that does; that is derived from two published rates, not a URIports figure. The objection that a file is cheap theatre is half right. Call it a file, then correct that: the file was never the point, the reply is.

The other objection is that a mandate would bury small firms. The UK text is gentler than critics assume: it asks when a reporter can expect an acknowledgement and updates, not a deadline for the fix. Whether a one-person shop should carry the same duty as a listed company is the real grey area; in my opinion, yes to acknowledging, no to fixing on a clock. Voluntary targets end badly: the CISA and FBI memory-safety roadmap set a 1 January 2026 date that binds nobody. Watch for these in your own setup:

• An empty Expires field or a lapsed date.
• A security address routed into a general support queue.
• No named owner, so the reply is nobody's job.
• A policy that threatens finders into silence.

The decision is whether to wait for the law or run a monitored channel now, and the answer is now. This week, email your own security address from a personal account and time the reply: a bounce or silence tells you what to fix first.