Because that's an important part of security in the real world.
Crypto is cool and all, but also creates plenty of footguns and is overall annoying to deal with. Legal solutions plug into the wider system of how adults deal with the world - courts, insurance, and yes, men with guns. It's not as solid as purely mathematical solutions, but it is flexible in ways that matter to real people in real-life situations.
Anyway, GP's point was more that banks are known to be subject to regulation wrt. accounts, they can't just shut you out and pretend you were never there (in contrast to e.g. Google which can, and does). They're not allowed to be too big to care.
> banks are known to be subject to regulation wrt. accounts, they can't just shut you out and pretend you were never there (in contrast to e.g. Google which can, and does)
Exactly. Banks are required to have what's called fiduciary responsibility. They have legal obligations to fix their mistakes. They can't provide their services "as is, with no warranty".
A friend who runs a bank branch for a major bank says that about a quarter of her day is spent dealing with people who had some kind of error or scam problem. All routine transactions are automated, and there are only about two teller windows in a branch now. What bank branch staff actually do is sell loans, and customer support. That customer support is not optional. There are bank regulators who will punish banks if they don't do it.
that's fine for a bank now, because they more or less control have full control over the thing you're trusting them with (your money).
password managers are keys to all sorts of third party systems, in a sense they're more like safe deposit boxes, and you don't hear of many banks offering them these days, and they cap their liability quite a bit. Also, a financial transaction is relatively easy to rewind by the bank, everything else your passwords give access to, not so much.
So sure, you might not be locked out of your passwords, but you run a much higher risk of someone else also gaining access to them.
> Crypto is cool and all, but also creates plenty of footguns and is overall annoying to deal with. Legal solutions plug into the wider system of how adults deal with the world - courts, insurance, and yes, men with guns. It's not as solid as purely mathematical solutions, but it is flexible in ways that matter to real people in real-life situations.
Okay, so the bank runs a password manager and messes up the unimportant crypto part that's just kiddie stuff (math). As a result, some folks in $FAR_OFF_COUNTRY copy off all your passwords. How does the legal system protect you?
