Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people is the wrong solution. It's unsustainable in the long run. Also, the last thing this world needs right now is even more centralization of power. Especially around yet another US company.
People who are unwilling to figure out the risks just should not use smartphones and the internet. They should not use internet banking. They should probably not have a bank account at all and just stick to cash. And the society should be able to accommodate such people — which is not that hard, really. Just roll back some of the so-called innovations that happened over the last 15 years. Whether someone uses technology, and how much they do, should be a choice, not a burden.
Sounds great in theory, but just today I was reminded how impossible this is when walking back from lunch, I noticed all the parking meters covered with a hood, labelled with instructions on how to pay with the app.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/city-of-regina-r...
EDIT: I guess "just" is doing some heavy-lifting, so I won't argue this further, but "impossible" isn't the word I would use either. The city could revert this decision, definitely if enough people wanted them to (that's... I know, the hardest part). I just agree with the OP that we technically could go back to slightly less-digital society.
Unfortunately, a more accurate way of putting it is: stuff takes cards in lieu of coins. Like, where I live (also EU), ticket machines in buses and trams have gradually been upgraded over the past decade to accept cards, and then to accept only cards.
It's a ratchet. Hidden inflation striking again. Cashless is cheaper to maintain than cash-enabled, so it pretends to be a value-add at first, but quickly displaces the more expensive option. Same with apps, which again, are cheaper to maintain than actual payment-safe hardware.
It's near impossible to reverse this, because to do that, you have to successfully argue for increasing costs - especially that inflation quickly eats all the savings from the original change, so you'd be essentially arguing to make things more expensive than the baseline.
I don't know if I have any friends who miss carrying coins and cash, or who miss carrying individual bus/subway tickets, but if they do, they're awfully quiet about it compared to the friends who happily say they can't remember using cash.
I'd say that if anything, cashless things are catching up to the general public.
Personally, I'm in favor of keeping things cash-friendly because people shouldn't be forced to be cash-free, but that's only to support a small minority of people.
These cashless solutions are just another thing[1] being pushed from top down; the passengers only notice when they suddenly find themselves unable to buy a ticket for coins, but by that point, the decision has long been made, so people only get to whine and complain, or otherwise express opinions that are not actually listened to by anyone with power to change things.
This is not saying that all those solutions are bad or inferior. Just that nobody is actually checking with people whether they want it or not; technology is deployed as fait accompli, and regular people just find ways to cope.
--
[0] - Like flies, I suppose. There's millions of them, they can't be wrong!
[1] - Like most technology, really, both software and hardware.
So at least from that angle I see it as an easy “government is actually trying to be more efficient” argument.
As a user cash is a pain in the ass. I have to count it out, keep it in my pockets, etc. So much easier to just tap my phone or my card. But yeah that’s a tradeoff in the classic “You’re trading X for convenience”.
Combined with the fact almost no one uses cash in Australia.
They are in theory still possible to destroy but it’s a lot harder and the little electronics left are cheaper to repair.
Every council I've lived in has still taken cash for every type of council fee, despite their "official" statement being they don't.
because I doubt anyone who spends cash regularly is holding much of it long enough to lose value to the digital ones in their checking account.
If you need $6 to pay for parking, and the largest commonly available coin is a quarter, that means you need 24 coins to pay. If the value of currency was such that the parking only costed $3, or if dollar coins were more common, you'd need less coins to pay.
I'm sure it was sold to the garage as a way to "maximize revenue and unlock operational efficiency". And sure enough, look, the revenue number is up and to the right. Working as designed.
Claude wrote:
> The broader trend is in your favor. App-only parking companies are facing a wave of legal action nationally. A major class action lawsuit against Metropolis Technologies (one of the largest app-based parking operators) alleges they violated consumer protection laws by failing to provide adequate means to pay for parking and then penalizing consumers for not paying. Lanier Law Firm Tennessee's Attorney General secured a nearly $9 million settlement against Metropolis for similar practices, requiring them to implement clear signage, maintain staffed customer support, and automatically issue refunds when their technology malfunctions.
It's just so exhausting to deal with this kind of thing, I've been super busy and it's not worth it to me to fight over $30, which is exactly the bet these scummy companies are making. I think LLMs lower the cost of drafting serious sounding letters to the point where that should be my first impulse rather than giving up and paying them, which rewards the behavior.
I don't see the "impossible" in my understanding of the linked article.
Coin-operated meters means someone have to come around checking the meter, collect coins, check the parking tickets. One person can only cover so many devices per day.
Then you have mechanical maintenance, with that comes disputes with "it was broken, it didn't accept the money" and so forth.
I've probably forgotten a number of other related things, but compare the above to digital solution.
Parking app, where the customer pays only for the parked time, no fiddling with money or keeping track of time. The parking attendant checks much quicker by just scanning the license plate while walking the rounds (could be done via car and a mounted camera even).
Analog just costs more, and citizens doesn't want taxes to go to things that are not strictly necessary.
I don't even think this a fair comparison, it's more like keeping the old car just in case or for other family members. But I think I specified enough what I'm arguing already, yes this is unlikely, just not impossible.
It was a public lot, and the only lot in the town, as far as we could tell.
And cashless is the default.
That costs money. Coin operated machines routinely are targeted by vandals, with each case making easily 100x the damage for loot. And card-acceptance also has its issues, the terminals need a data uplink, someone needs to take care of the machines. That's why so many (especially private parking lots) shift over to purely app based schemes. Orders of magnitude less tech you need to worry about.
For example, I read that Switzerland voted to guarantee the use of physical cash, even enshrining it in the constitution, which clearly points toward preserving older infrastructure. However, if you have cash but no one accepts it, it becomes useless. So it would probably require more—something like requiring businesses and the government to accept that form of payment.
As many things in life, not impossible: but is society willing to pay for that?
To me it proves that Google's steps to lock down phones isn't really about security. To them the scams that happen are acceptable losses. The scammed will still use Android and still click on ads and still let themselves be tracked and marketed to as before. But if Google can use the excuse of security to edge out alternative apps and app stores they will spend plenty of money and time to do it.
This isn't security, it's sealing a hole in the sales funnel.
It is promising that Google has avoided just turning off sideloading but still put measures in place to protect people.
And since the customer was supposedly being careless, they won't get anything from the bank.
Exactly! I don't understand how account-draining transactions make it through, yet I get the third degree when I withdrawal a few thousand in cash to buy used equipment off craigslist.
But it's an interesting thing to raise, because so often when they do enforce those controls - the outcry is 'bank won't let me do what I want with my money!'.
Not such a stones throw from - 'tech company won't let me do what I want with my device!'
Im not making any specific point. But perhaps thats indicative that the solution needs to be holistic, or just that security is hard XD.
This stops nothing of the sort.
Yes, banks should (and sometimes do) double- and triple-check with you before allowing large transfers/withdrawals, but scammers know how to coach their victims past this. Speaking from experience.
(I also don't fully agree this is Google's responsibility, and I am not happy about this development. But there are legitimate points in favor of outsourcing the question of "will this software do nefarious things" to some kind of trusted signing authority.)
From who? I'd rather have this done by a regulated service like a bank than a private corporation with a perverse incentive. Frauds and scams are already illegal.
That't the similar narrative to "think of the children". They want to act as this middleman and secure their place, all while having unfettered access to people's data.
Google is on the side of the scammers.
Stop shilling
Your argument is basically "If the Android team cared about user safety then Google would shut down as a business to support them". It's nonsense.
...and...
some people are gullible enough to go into a hidden setting on their phone and enable that in order to install an app from a random Chinese website
are kind of contradictory.
And, you don't need an app, I would imagine most scamming is done without an app.
So, really, we're solving a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of the problem.
The most effective means of hacking is social engineering. You can't solve that with any number of "security measures". If you require all the DNA sources in the world, a scammer will still charm a target into opening it up for them.
This isn't about how skilled a person is, it is about tackling social engineering. The article gave the example of someone posing as a relative, it could also be a blackmail scheme, but it could also be the carefully planned takeover of a respected open source project (ahem, xz).
What I am saying is this sort of crime affect anyone. We simply see more of it among the vulnerable because they are the low hanging fruit. Raising the bar will only change who is vulnerable. Society is simply too invested in technology to dissuade criminals. Which is why I don't think this will work, and why I think going nuclear on truly independent developers is going to do more damage than good.
One way to look at it: there are many open source projects targeting Android, projects that gain some sense of legitimacy over being open source yet have few (if any) eyes vetting them. Or, perhaps, the project is legitimate but people are getting third-party builds. That is what F-Droid does. That is what the developer of a third-party ROM does. It would not require the resources of a nation state to compromise them. I am not trying to cast a shadow on open source projects or F-Droid here. I am simply using them as an example because I use said software and am familiar with that ecosystem. The same goes for any software obtained outside of the Play Store, and it's likely worse since there is no transparency in those cases. Heck, the same goes for software obtained through the Play Store (but we're probably talking about nation state resources on that front).
Another way to look at it: we are only considering a specific avenue for exploitation here. If you close it off, the criminals will look for others. I would be surprised if they weren't looking for ways to bypass Google's checks. I would be surprised if they weren't looking for weaknesses in popular apps. Then there is social engineering. While convincing someone to install software is likely desirable, it certainly isn't the only approach.
Either way, I don't think Google's approach is solving the problem and I think it is going to do a huge amount of damage. Let's face it: major corporations aren't a paragon of goodness, yet Google's shift is handing them the market.
Ha ha ha, "resources of a nation state"! One could run phishing campaigns at scale over many years without breaking the bank. This was true before LLMs, it's probably even cheaper now.
And yet, people on HN respond to bots all the time.
Should we ever suffer a significant loss of customer identity data and/or funds, that risk was considered an existential threat for our customers and our institution.
I'm not coming to Google's defense, but fraud is a big, heavy, violent force in critical infrastructure.
And our phones are a compelling surface area for attacks and identity thefts.
Then also allow the kernel to run linux as a process, and run whatever you like there, however you want.
Its technically possible at the device level. The hard part seems to be UX. Do you show trusted and untrusted apps alongside one another? How do you teach users the difference?
My piano teacher was recently scammed. The attackers took all the money in her bank account. As far as I could tell, they did it by convincing her to install some android app on her phone and then grant that app accessibility permissions. That let the app remotely control other apps. They they simply swapped over to her banking app and transferred all the money out. Its tricky, because obviously we want 3rd party accessibility applications. But if those permissions allow applications to escape their sandbox, and its trouble.
(She contacted the bank and the police, and they managed to reverse the transactions and get her her money back. But she was a mess for a few days.)
And this almost certainly means that the bank took a fraud-related monetary loss, because the regulatory framework that governs banks makes it difficult for them to refuse to return their customer's money on the grounds that it was actually your piano teacher's fault for being stupid with her bank app on her smartphone (also, even if it were legal to do so, doing this regularly would create a lot of bad press for the bank). And they're unlikely to recover the losses from the actual scammers.
Fraud losses are something that banks track internally and attempt to minimize when possible and when it doesn't trade-off against other goals they have, such as maintaining regulatory compliance or costing more money than the fraud does. This means that banks - really, any regulated financial institution at all that has a smartphone app - have a financial incentive to encourage Apple and Google to build functionality into their mass-market smartphone OSs that locks them down and makes it harder for attackers to scam ordinary, unsophisticated customers in this way. They have zero incentive to lobby to make smartphone platforms more open. And there's a lot more technically-unsophisticated users like your piano teacher than there are free-software-enthusiasts who care about their smartphone OS provider not locking down the OS.
I think this is a bad thing, but then I'm personally a free-software-enthusiast, not a technically-unsophisticated smartphone user.
In which country? This happened in Australia. The rules are almost certainly different from the US.
This won't work. It's turtles all the way down and it will just end up back where we are now.
More software will demand installation in the sandboxed enclave. Outside the enclave the owner of the device would be able to exert control over the software. The software makers don't want the device owners exerting control of the software (for 'security', or anti-copyright infringement, or preventing advertising avoidance). The end user is the adversary as much as the scammer, if not more.
The problem at the root of this is the "right" some (entitled) developers / companies believe they have to control how end users run "their" software on devices that belongs to the end users. If a developer wants that kind of control of the "experience" the software should run on a computer they own, simply using the end user's device as "dumb terminal".
Those economics aren't as good, though. They'd have to pay for all their compute / storage / bandwidth, versus just using the end user's. So much cheaper to treat other people's devices like they're your own.
It's the same "privatize gains, socialize losses" story that's at the root of so many problems.
It may still be an improvement over the situation now though. At least something like this would let you run arbitrary software on the device. That software just wouldn't have "root", since whatever you run would be running in a separate container from the OS and banking apps and things.
It would also allow 3rd party app stores, since a 3rd party app store app could be a sandboxed application itself, and then it could in turn pass privileges to any applications it launches.
I can run an emulator in the browser my phone and run whatever software I want. The software inside that emulator doesn't get access to cool physical hardware features. It runs at a performance loss. It doesn't have direct network access. Second class software.
SeL4 and similar sandboxing mechanisms run programs at full, native speed. In a scheme like I'm proposing, all software would be sandboxed using the same mechanism, including banking apps and 3rd party software. Everything can run fast and take full advantage of the hardware and all exposed APIs. Apps just can't mess with one another. So random programs can't mess with the banking app.
Some people in this thread have proposed using separate devices for secure computing (eg banking) and "hacking". That's probably the right thing in practice. But you could - at least technically - build a device that let you do both on top of SeL4. Just have different sandboxed contexts for each type of software. (And the root kernel would have to be trusted).
I interpreted your statement "Then also allow the kernel to run linux as a process, and run whatever you like there, however you want." as the Linux process being analogous to a VM. Invoking an emulator wasn't really the right analogy. Sorry about that.
For me it comes down to this:
As long as the root-of-trust in the device is controlled by the device owner the copyright cartels, control-freak developers, companies who profit end users viewing ads, and interests who would create "security" by removing user freedom (to get out of fraud liability) won't be satisfied.
Likewise, if that root-of-trust in the device isn't controlled by the device owner then they're not really the device owner.
But a design like this might please nobody. Apple doesn't want 3rd party app stores. Or really hackers to do anything they don't approve of. And hackers want actual root.
You also have so much grey area where things aren't actual illegal, such as gathering a massive amount of information on adults in the US via third party cookies and ubiquitous third party javascript.
Thats why platforms created in the internet age are much more opinionated on what API they provide to apps, much more stringent on sandboxing, and try to push software installation onto app stores which can restrict apps based on business policy, to go beyond technological and legal limitations.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_authentication_num... (This is a bit outdated, nowadays it works via QR codes instead of those flickering barcodes but the concept stays the same)
And the website and app of my bank with offices is ... how should I put it ... a bit Kafkaesque.
The obvious thing banks should be doing is putting fucking restrictions on these accounts by default and let people ask for exceptions.
And of course if regulations don't encourage them to pick social-engineering-proof defaults then things won't improve.
All the information and experience I ever got tells me this is security theater by institutions who try to distract from their atrocious security with some snake oil. But I'm willing to be convinced that there is more to it if presented with contraindicating information. So I'm interested in your case.
How did demanding control over your customers' devices and taking away their ability to run software of their choice in practice in quantifiable and attributable terms reduce fraud?
Those are based on APIs available from the mobile devices. Google and Apple can offer other means by which to secure these things, and to validate that the device hasn't been cracked and is submitting false attestations. But even a significant financial institution has no relationship with Apple on the dev side of things.. Apple does what it decides to do and the financial institution builds to what is available.
These controls work -- over time fraud and risk go down.
Who did that?
Apple's argument for locking down the iPhone but not the Mac has always been some variation of "Mac users are professionals and iPhones are for everyone." Fine! Where can I buy the unrestricted iPhone? As far as I'm concerned, basically every problem could be solved if Apple would put the Security Research Device on an unlisted page of their online store for the general public. Normies won't buy it, and I will.
That argument no longer holds water with the release of the Macbook Neo and the associated Tiktok advertising campaign [1].
What guarantees your banking app is the right one? A PNG and an app name with no security whatsoever.
How did the world come to this when the internet long predated smartphones and so many "apps" are little more than bookmarked wrappers around websites?
Typosquatting would like to have a word with you.
That means the people who say "I can evaluate the intricacies and impacts of software authorization" have significantly fewer speciality devices to pick from, and those devices may not be worth developers (or regulators) making carve-outs to support.
But this is the wrong take. I expect to go to a restaurant and not die from the food… and I want nothing to do with the inner workings of the kitchen. I just want to know any restaurant I go into will be safe. Society has made restaurants safe, either because of government pressure or it’s good for business.
How is that not a fair ask for technology, too? We all have things we know well, and then there’s reasons we’re alive that we don’t even know exist because someone took care of it.
It’s unreasonable to only allow people to participate in society once they understand every nuance.
Now imagine that every restaurant in your city is owned by one of two megacorporations and they really don't want you to have a microwave at home, let alone a stove. They expect that you will get all your food from them. This is where it's going with apps right now.
Which is that the fact that restaurants have to certify for food safety training and pass regular inspection is perfectly reasonable, and allows those who aren't experts in those areas, or want to continually inspect kitchens to dine out in confidence & conveinience. (or at least vastly reduced risk).
There should be some equivalent, safe, experience in the technology space. Especially given how powerful a tool of liberation it is.
Of course, who controls that, and the ability to turn off those safeguards is important for many many other reasons and... also a question of liberty. And so I think it is a difficult conflict to resolve elegantly.
I think it's fine to give people an easy mode. Not everyone cares about cooking (or tech). I just wish companies weren't trying to take the advanced features from the rest of us who do care.
I'd imagine someone who is passionate about cooking wouldn't be delighted if you cloudn't buy any ingredients in a store.
I see the value in precooked food and black-box working technology. But for me myself, as an enthusiast: I like being able to tinker and control my technology.
It still doesn't make sense, we need a better plan.
And I expect to buy food without that food being sanctioned by a huge, monopolistic company. Especially if said company has shown itself to be completely subservient to an overbearing, increasingly fascist government.
That train has left the station decades ago. The internet has become an essential part of modern societies. People can't not use the internet (or smartphones), at least if they don't live in the woods.
They do not.
https://www.wizzair.com/en-gb/help-centre/check-in-and-board...
https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-ie/articles/39758330098577-Wh...
Will see about Wizz, maybe it was only Ryanair.
we should probably workshop ideas that are within reality.
downvoters are welcome to tell me how they would approach a worlwide review of everything that requires internet and un-internet it. i will wait.
some primer questions to get your brain turning: who organizes and conducts the review? who pays for the review? who pays for the implementations? whats the messaging and how do you convince people to go along with rethinking/re-implementing their entire already-working infrastructure that they have potentially spent millions to billions of dollars on? do you just dissolve all of the internet-only services, and tell the founders to suck it? who enforces it and how?
If a business has more than X employees / does more than X amount of business per year / has more than X physical locations (pick one or more, make up some new criteria, tune to suit the needs of society) it must offer the same capabilities to interact with the business to those without smart phones as those with.
Small businesses wouldn't be radically impacted because they generally aren't "Internet only" anyway. The large business that are impacted have plenty of resources to handle compliance. If anything I'd argue it levels the playing field to an extent.
1) if you make it only applicable to smart phones, i just stop offering an uber smartphone app and now uber is website-only. if you apply it to "internet", as the original poster did, then:
2) companies like uber would be forced to shut down. you can say "cool, if they cant do it, their problem", which is fine, but a dozen of major issues pop up if something like 1/4 of the businesses currently propping up the stock market have to close doors or otherwise invest billions of dollars in phone centers or whatever they need.
it also raises questions about all sorts of businesses. another off the top of my head example: should 1password setup a call center where i can tell the operator what my new hackernews password is? is 1password exempt even if they have hundreds of employees and do millions per year? if yes, we have to come up with a bunch of murky criteria and definitions of what companies are exempt (across every industry, no less). which will, of course, cost a lot of time and money, just to surely be gamed. can we convince tax payers to foot that bill?
(this is also ignoring the approximately 0% chance that some sort of regulation of this sort gets pushed into law, against all of the extremely powerful tech lobbies. we dont even have ubiquitous right-to-repair!)
There won't ever be any consumer protection legislation like I suggested. I know that. It would make things better, but it'll never happen.
Things aren't going to get better for people who don't want to be forced to use new technology. (Eventually it'll be you being forced, too.)
I'm arguing, much in the way some techies bemoan removing malware from their parents' computer as an argument for why we shouldn't be allowed to use our mobile computers for what we want, for businesses to be required to offer ways of interacting to people who don't want to own smartphones. My argument isn't in the interests of powerful lobbies.
My wife and I have been helping her elderly aunt deal with a bank recently. I was shocked at the assumption her aunt would be able to receive SMS, use a smartphone with a camera to do "identity verification", etc. This lady has a flip phone, a land line, and no personal computer. Sure-- she could meet with someone at a branch to help her. Their first available meeting was a month away.
It's not going to get fixed. Nobody with the power to do anything about it cares.
You have to expect business to optimize for their common case and just make sure there is a path for the exceptions. That's what this bank did and it's just the way of the world.
I'm not a big phone person either, and it is inconvenient for sure, but I get benefits from that and the cost is extra friction when dealing with online institutions. Everything has a trade-off
i am 100% with you.
>My wife and I have been helping her elderly aunt deal with a bank recently. I was shocked at the assumption her aunt would be able to receive SMS, use a smartphone with a camera to do "identity verification", etc. This lady has a flip phone, a land line, and no personal computer. Sure-- she could meet with someone at a branch to help her. Their first available meeting was a month away.
i have been there too, and it drives me mental.
i would love to work on realistic ways of addressing it, because it is a real issue. i am not denying that at all. my whole point, in my original comment, was that a plan of "un-internet the world" is, in my opinion, a complete waste of time and energy to seriously work on. the internet is here -- okay, lets figure it out from there. the genie isnt going back into the bottle. so lets spend our energy on ideas that acknowledge that fact, instead of trying to shove the genie back in.
I'm talking more about things that used to work without the internet for decades just fine but suddenly started requiring the use of the internet. Banks, government agencies, parking, event tickets, etc.
I've had multiple venues just straight-up tell me "no app, no entry" when I've contacted them pushing-back on installing Ticketmaster's drek.
For one I was able to play "confused old man" and get printed tickets, at least.
For another I just gave up, swallowed my morals, and loaded their app on my wife's iPhone.
There was one that I just didn't buy tickets for. The performer didn't really need my support, and I wasn't super broken up to not see them, but they lost a sale because of the stupid app requirement.
how are you determining which businesses are affected? would you apply these regulations to entire industries (e.g. the entire finance industry) or would each business have to be reviewed independently?
if we run with the finance/bank example, what do you do about online-only banks (e.g. WealthSimple)? should they be forced to shut down?
(keeping in mind that this regulation applies to all industries, so the above example of closing all physical operations because the regulations make it more profitable to now be online-only, so that the regulations dont apply, repeats in all industries)
It will be easier to comply for other industries. From my initial example, for event tickets, they wouldn't care much whether they scan a screen or a piece of paper when you enter, and they could let already-existing box offices sell the tickets. For government agencies, those already have offices, so nothing changes. For parking, just bring back the kiosks.
Then can do standard formulas like, will operations continue if the power is out, internet, smart phones, running water, phone lines, payment processing, etc, how long will service be down 1-3 days, weeks, months etc
If your store can't immediately switch to cash apply some modest tax increase. If people can't buy food for more than a week the extra tax is high. You might want to buy gas lamps and a "home" battery.
i am saying that you cant do a worldwide systematic review of everything that relies on the internet, and un-internet it.
if you have a realistic approach to doing so, i will eat my shoe.
your idea is not the One Good Idea that everyone must subscribe to or else they must shrug and give up.
but, lets hear it. what specifically is involved in "pushing for it"?
People who aren't technically sophisticated should choose the smartphone ecosystem that was designed to offer the safety of a walled garden from the start.
Google sold Android as the ecosystem that gave users the freedom to do anything they like, including shooting themselves in the foot.
Google should not be allowed to fraudulently go back on their promise now that they have driven the other open ecosystems out of the marketplace.
Just yesterday I discovered that my grandmother had been receiving calls from "Google business support" on her iPhone. The fact that they can't get her to sideload some app doesn't seem to stop them.
How do you plan to decide who gets to use internet banking and who doesn't? That doesn't seem like a good road to be going down, either.
Are they really though? does the average person really care about side loading? I think we are in an echo chamber. I can't picture any of the people in my life installing things from outside of an app store on their phone. However I realize that's purely anecdotal, it would be nice to see actual statistics on this to have a more informed decision.
Some of them will even be frightened by the question because they consider their devices scary and dangerous enough already.
But it will affect them all the same.
Even Fortnite gave up on direct installs. If one of most popular game in the world can't make it, who can?
So yes, hundreds of millions of people care about this.
Normies in sanctioned countries install banking apps by "sideloading" APK's downloaded from an official site. They all know exactly what "sideloading" is and why Google is banning it.
> They all know [...] why Google is banning it.
Do they? I don't think most "normies" would come to the same conclusion you have. By definition, a "normie" seems much more likely to trust that this is being done for security rather than persecution. Especially when they learn that Americans can't easily sideload bank apps either.
Absolutely 100 percent.
> a "normie" seems much more likely to trust that this is being done for security rather than persecution
When USGov sanctions a NormieBank in a sanctioned country and its apps disappear from the Play Store and then Google announces that APK's cannot be installed anymore then even the dumbest sheeple can put two and two together.
Also, this isn't a Google issue, this is a USGov issue.
What is Google to do when people in suits ask why they provide a sanctions avoidance technology with a scary name like "sideloading"? (Sounds like something that terrorists and Iranians do, tbh.)
"Ruining Android for everyone" ("to try to maybe help some") does not mean, "Android is now ruined for X, for all X." It means, perhaps confusingly, pretty much the opposite.
It means: "There exists some X for which Android is now ruined (because Google is trying to protect Y, for all Y)." (Yes, really. The way the other person phrased it is the right way way to phrase it—or, at least, it's a valid way to phrase it.)
Given how this is going, I'd not be surprised if anti-semitism comes roaring back by the end of the decade.
This is a huge issue yeah, so many jewish organizations that used to be fighting antisemitism are now more concerned with fighting anti-zionism, calling everybody who doesn't lick Israel's boot an antisemite. This will blow up in all their faces so hard.
We haven't started watering crops with salt-water but it's only a matter of time.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-israel-floods-...
This is about Google wanting more control over their ecosystem.
That container won't work to stop bears from having access to trash, because tourists have the alternative of just throwing their trash on the ground, but being unwilling to bother using a bear-safe container is a very different thing from being unable to.
Even if they're the majority?
(Keep in mind that as average lifespan keeps getting longer while birth rates keep going lower, demographics will tend to skew older and older. Already happened in Japan; other developed countries will catch up soon.)
> They should probably not have a bank account at all and just stick to cash.
You know that these (mostly) don't fall into this category of being "hopeless with [modern] technology" because they're cognitively impaired, right?
Mostly, the people who most benefit by these protections, are just people 1. with full lives, who 2. are old enough that when they were first introduced to these kinds of technologies, it came at a time in their life when they already had too much to do and too many other things to think/care about, to have any time left over for adapting their thinking to a "new way of doing things."
This group of people still fully understands, and can make fluent use of, all the older technologies "from back in their day" that they did absorb and adapt to earlier in their lives, back when they had the time/motivation to do so. They can use a bank account; they can make phone calls and understand voicemail; they can print and fax and probably even email things. They can, just barely, use messaging apps. But truly modern inventions like "social media' confound them.
Old bigcorps with low churn rates are literally chock-full of this type of person, because they've worked there since they were young. That's why these companies themselves can sometimes come off as "out of touch", both in their communications and in their decision-making. But those companies don't often collapse from mismanagement. Things still get done just fine. Just using slower, older processes.
The problem is that most apps target only those two, and the second is trying to moron-proof, loosing most of it value to part of its users, while the apps are still locked in.
The problem isnt with technology. The problem is with physical ownership versus copyright/trademark/patent ownership in abeyance of physical ownership.
I go to a store and buy a device. I have a receipt showing a legal and good sale. This device isnt mine, even if a receipt says so.
The software (and now theres ALWAYS software) isnt mine and can never be mine. My ownership is degraded because a company can claim that I didn't buy a copy of software, or that its only licensed, or they retain control remotely.
And the situation is even worse if the company claims its a "digital restriction", ala DMCA. Then even my 1st amendment speech rights are abrogated AND my ownership rights are ignored.
It would not be hard to right this sinking ship.
1. Abolish DMCA.
2. Establish that first sale doctrine is priority above copyright/patent/trademark
3. Tax these 'virtual property rights'
4. Have FTC find any remote control of sold goods be considered as fraudulently classified indefinite rental (want to rent? State it as such)Yet they host the very ads that are part of these scams and profit from them. If Google wanted and actually cared about scams they would stop hosting these scam ads en mass.
It clearly is a pretense. This is not about scams and it will not stop with a ridiculous 24h waiting period to enable installing software. They will remove the option altogether.
This is about scams because 99% of all apk installs come not from basement power users installing cracked apps, but from the older people that are all too trusting to the internet that they're browsing.
I can also tell you from experience that malware Google search ads are common. Anyone who used to use Optifine knows that without an adblocker it was common for fake Optifine sites to be at the top of the results with a tiny marker saying "sponsored" or "ad".
Consider an older technology that became fundamental to much of daily life a century or two ago: writing. After a few millennia where literacy was a specialized skill, we pretty quickly transitioned to a society where it was essential for common activities. Rather than make sure everything had pictures and such to accommodate the illiterate, we tried to make it so that the entire population is literate, and came pretty close to succeeding. There are people who just outright can't read for whatever reason, but they're a very small minority and we aim to accommodate them by giving them assistance so they can get by in a literate world, rather than changing the world so you don't need to be able to read to live a normal life.
Rather than saying that half the population (a low estimate, I believe, for how many people will fall prey to malware in an anything-goes world) should abandon this technology, we should work to make it so they don't have to, with some combination of education and technological measures.
So long as the 5g chips and the 2 mobile app stores remain under control, then 5 eyes has nearly full coverage.
Nobody is forcing you to use a smartphone. If your work needs you to use some app, they’ll buy you a phone if they respect you.
If you’re so upset just stop using it. But you won’t.
Those groups of people are Google's paying customers. Google will, of course, defer to the ones who need more help to be safe online over the ones who don't. That's how you create a safe ecosystem.
People frequently talk about this with respect to AI and ads and how it’s bad for people to be use these things. I recommend we disallow the internet entirely for classes of people whose minds are not ready for the downsides of the tech.
With your Adderall prescription should come a phone number to sign up to the government proctoring service.
Pretty much illegal in some parts of EU
Also how is it related to the EU if it only affects certain places? Could have just said certain places in Europe
There are upcoming limits for cash transactions (10K, countries can opt to go lower), and strong requirements for identity verification at 3K or more euros in cash.
See: https://www.deloittelegal.de/dl/en/services/legal/perspectiv...
EDIT: The other side of the coin is that banks are _required_ to give legal residents of a country a basic account that can be used for payments.
Google doesn't give one single shit if users download malware from the Play Store, but hypothetical malware from third party sources is so much worse that we need to ruin the whole OS? That doesn't pass the sniff test.
Google wants to make sure you can only download malware from developers who give google a cut. They want to control the OS and remove user choice. That's all it is. That's what it's always been about.
"Protecting users" is a pretense and nothing more. Google does not care at all about user safety. They aren't even capable of caring at this point. There are far, far cheaper and more effective ways to actually protect users, and google isn't doing any of them.
Of course it might be that they want more control. In addition to controlling the world's most popular web browser and the world's most popular search engine and the world's most popular online advertising network and the world's most popular online video service.
They have shown time and time again that they will take as much control from you as they can.
As someone that was going to switch from iPhone to Android/Pixel later this year, at least now I know not to bother anymore, as the locking down of Android won't stop here.
That's ridiculous. Phones are being made more and more of a requirement to participate in society, including by governments.
We need to move back to putting users back into full control. Machines (including computers) should ALWAYS respect the input of the user, even if the user is wrong.
If a person shoots themself with a gun as a result of their incompetence, we don't fault the gun manufacturer for not designing the gun to prevent auto-execution. If you can't operate a firearm safely, you shouldn't attempt to operate a firearm.
Similarly, if a person deliberately points their car a solid object and accelerates into it, the actions of the operator shouldn't be the car manufacturer's responsibility. We need to get rid of ESC, ABS, AEB, etc. These features have created a whole slew of drivers who speed headfirst into the back of stationary drivers and expect their car to stop itself. This works right up until a sensor fails and the operator flies through the windshield (usually people like this don't wear seat-belts). If you can't drive, you shouldn't be driving until you rectify your incompetence.
Similarly, phones and computers should respect user input. If a users wants root access to their personal device, they should be able to get root access. If a user runs "rm -rf --no-preserve-root /" as root, the device should oblige and delete everything, since that is what the operator instructed it to do. If you can't be trusted to use a computer, you shouldn't be using a computer until you rectify your incompetence.
The lack of accountability in modern society is disgusting, and it leads to much deeper societal problems when people refuse to better themselves and instead expect the world to shield them from their willful ignorance.
That is unreasonable. ABS, ESC, and AEB all exist to interpret what the driver intends. The driver does not intend for their wheels to lock up, that's why ABS exists, nor does the driver intend to skid. You can argue that AEB does not reflect the will of the driver, but it can also be disabled.
It's selfish to advocate against better protections for the least able people in the world just for our own convenience.
- Must enable developer mode -- some apps (e.g., banking apps) will refuse to operate and such when developer mode is on, and so if you depend on such apps, I guess you just can't sideload?
- One-day (day!!!) waiting period to activate (one-time) -- the vast majority of people who need to sideload something will probably not be willing to wait a day, and will thus just not sideload unless they really have no choice for what they need. This kills the pathway for new users to sideload apps that have similar functionality to those on the Play Store.
The rest -- restarting, confirming you aren't being coached, and per-install warnings -- would be just as effective alone to "protect users," but with those prior two points, it's clear that this is just simply intended to make sideloading so inconvenient that many won't bother or can't (dev mode req.).
Hi, I'm the community engagement manager @ Android. It's my understanding that you don't have to keep developer options enabled after you enable the advanced flow. Once you make the change on your device, it's enabled.
If you turn off developer options, then to turn off the advanced flow, you would first have to turn developer options back on.
>- One-day (day!!!) waiting period to activate (one-time) -- the vast majority of people who need to sideload something will probably not be willing to wait a day, and will thus just not sideload unless they really have no choice for what they need.
ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.
Allow a toggle with no waiting period during initial device setup. The user is almost certainly not being guided by a scammer when they're first setting up their device, so this addresses the concern Google claims is driving the verification requirement. I'll be pretty angry if I have to wait a day to install F-Droid and finish setting up a new phone.
Evil, for the record would mean blocking developers of things that do not act against the user's wishes, but might offend governments or interfere with Google's business model, like the article's example of an alternative YouTube client that bypasses Google’s ads. Youtube is within its rights to try to block such clients, but preventing my device from installing them when that's what I want to do is itself a malicious act.
I like this idea in principle but I think it could become a workaround that the same malicious entities would be willing to exploit, by just coercing their victims to "reset" their phones to access that toggle.
I'm sure there's a hypothetical scenario where someone successfully runs a scam that way, but there's also a hypothetical scenario where a 24 hour wait doesn't succeed at interrupting the scam.
Trading freedom for safety eliminates both.
Ok, but why is this advertised to applications in the first place? It's quite literally none of their business that developer options are enabled and it's a constant source of pain when some government / banking apps think they're being more "secure" by disallowing this.
Someone is just going to make a nice GUI application for sideloading apks with a single drag-and-drop, so if your idea is that ADB is a way to ensure only "users who know what they're doing" are gonna sideload, you've done nothing. This is all security theatre.
Not applying the policy to adb installs makes a lot more sense if the people this is trying to protect don't have a computer
This just adds the step of "download Cool ABD Installer from the play store" to the set of directions I would think.
Reconsider.
All of this is just a bandaid, so why not stop at the state we are at _right now_, without some kind of 24h-long process to enable sideloading and let people be people? Yes, people make mistakes. But that is not your responsibility, especially if it comes at the cost of freedom. The most secure android device would probably be a brick, but you won't sell these, right?
Please instead take these resources and invest them into the app verification process in the play store. Way too many scams are right under your nose, no need to search in places where people are happy with the status quo.
If you go forward with this, I am not coming back. I will never again in my life trust you. And believe me - I still have boycotts on-going 20 years later. Including microsoft. It is surprisingly easy to avoid you "Ubiquitous" companies once you get your mind into it.
If you install F-Droid via ADB, can F-Droid then install the apps from its catalog?
I’m not convinced this is really to protect users from being hurt by scammers, it is really about protecting the users from doing what hurts your company interests.
When you enable the advanced flow and choose the 'indefinite' option, that allows you to install unregistered apps 'permanently', which is effectively what you're asking for, no?
(I've gotten questions on whether this setting can be restored after a factory reset or when setting up a new device - I'll have to get back to you on that if you're wondering.)
This is hot garbage. Eliminating third party app stores like F-Droid defeats the whole purpose many of us even bother running Android instead of locked down Apple stuff.
This matters if you're sideloading an app store like F-Droid, because sideloaded app stores still have to go through PackageInstaller [1], which probably still enforces verification checks for adb-sideloaded apps?
[1] https://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/pm/P...
It says something about 'restart your phone and reauthenticate' that's why I'm asking. What do you autenticate?
> ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.
Um yeah but then do I have to install every update via adb? I want to just use F-Droid.
You're authenticating that you're the device owner (via your device's saved biometrics or PIN/pattern/password).
>Um yeah but then do I have to install every update via adb? I want to just use F-Droid.
No, once you go through the advanced flow and choose the option to allow installing unregistered apps indefinitely, you can both install and update unregistered apps without going through the flow again (or using ADB).
"If you don't like the food we're serving, you can always buy a farm"
On a scale from "not worried" to "let them eat shit", how is the product team thinking about the breakage you'll get from people moving off platform?
I still feel, though, that having to go ahead and proclaim “I am a developer!” just to enable sideloading is a bit much, as almost certainly the vast majority of sideloaders aren’t developers. Nonetheless, it does keep sideloading as an option, and I do see why, from Google’s perspective, using the already-existing developer mode to gate the feature would be convenient in the short term. Perhaps the announcement should specify this -- I suspect a number of people who read it also noticed the lack of that clarification.
And yes, good point on ADB. That does make this less inconvenient for developers or power users, though doesn’t help non-developers very much.
What apps are those? I've yet to run into any of my banking apps that refuse to run with developer mode enabled. I've seen a few that do that for rooted phones but that's a different story. I've been running android for a decade and a half now with developer mode turned on basically the whole time and never had an app refuse to load because of it.
I wonder what makes them less trustful of Android security. AFAIK there are still pretty hard limits to what you can do inside apps you did not create. US companies at least seem comfortable with their security even with Developer or accessibility apps enabled.
The amount of control we've given corporations over our computers is incredibly disappointing.
Something like Github's approach of forcing users to type the name of the repo they wish to delete would seem to be more than sufficient to protect technically disinclined users while still allowing technically aware users to do what they please with their own device.
Scammers aren't going to wait on the phone for a day with your elderly parent.
"Okay, come back to me in a few hours and we'll continue"
Remember, these are already people who took the time to respond. They are invested.
"Google will call you again tomorrow to get you your refund."
There, we've successfully circumvented all of Google's security engineering on this "feature."
https://youtu.be/YIR-nJv_-VA?t=121
They don't mind being patient when they have dozens of other victims in the wait queue.
tl;dr of this post is that Google wants to lock down Android and be its gatekeeper. Every other point of discussion is just a distraction.
Scammers will definitely call back the next day to continue. But it is quite possible that by then the victim has realized, or talked to someone who helped them realize that they are being scammed.
She went to a bank to transfer the scammer money. They told her no. She came back the next day. The police got involved and explained everything to her. Then she came back the next day. After that, she apparently found another location which let her transfer the money.
There's basically zero chance a 24 hour (or any amount of a) cool off period will help these people.
Like, I'm sure there's a small amount of people who normally wouldn't get scammed but fall for it in a panic. But, is that really such a big concern for Google that they absolutely must continue stripping user freedoms from us? Is the current 30s popup which needs 3 confirmations not enough? Will the new one really work?
Whether the feature is beneficial overall is a different story. But helping some people is great even if it doesn't help everyone.
It's kind of funny, but I very much agree with this. It's just in this case, it's hurting everyone (in ways most don't even realize) so that you can help a few people.
It's like putting everyone in prison, because some people might commit a crime and this would save some victims. A bit of an overreaction, no?
>Whether the feature is beneficial overall is a different story.
It's the entore story in my eyes. Hell paved with good intentions (and I don't even think Google's intentions are good).
So Google's going to add some nonsense abstraction layer and when this fails to curb the problem after a 24 hour wait, it will be extended more maybe a week, and more information must be collected to release it. We all know how this goes.
24 is just so long.
But also, my expectation is that a scammer is going to just automate the flow here anyways. Cool, you hit the "24 hour" wait period, I'll call you back tomorrow, the next day, or the next day and continue the scam process.
It might stop some less sophisticated spammers for a little bit, but I expect that it'll just be a few tweaks to make it work again.
There will be some proportion of people who mention to their spouse/child/friend about how Google called them to fix their phone, and are saved by that waiting period.
The question is, why exactly 24 hours? The argument is that the time limit is set to protect the users and sacrifice usability to do so. So it would be prudent to set the time limit to the shortest amount that will protect the user -> and that shortest amount is apparently 24 hours, which is rather.. suspiciously long and round :)
Unless you want to pick 1 week. But that's a lot more annoying.
Someone who lives in another timezone or works weird hours etc. Our routines generally repeat on 24hour schedules, so likely to be one point of overlap.
Isn't that the objective? "Reducing scams" is the same kind of argument as "what about the children"; it's supposed to make you stop thinking about what it means, because the intentions are so good.
Installing apps manually or through another store app is not "sideloading".
Sideloading is the new jaywalking, a newish word to pretend that a pretty normal action would be in any way illegal, dangerous or harmful.
If you turn off developer options, then to turn off the advanced flow, you would first have to turn developer options back on.
Would apps installed from F-Droid be subject to this process, or would they also be exempt? Could that be a solution that makes everyone happy? Android already tracks which app store an app originates from re: autoupdating.
Also: Can I skip the 24h by changing the my phone's clock?
Well that's if they go through the verification process, which does not seem like a thing they'd want to do - https://f-droid.org/en/2026/02/24/open-letter-opposing-devel...
But there's been some comments that even that wouldn't be possible, every app would have to be verified individually, or be signed by a developer with less than 20 installs.
(Which of course then begs the question: Why not build a version of Fdroid that generates its own signing key and resigns every app on device?)
JFC. Why would an app be allowed to know this? Just another datapoint for fingerprinting.
0: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Set...
In this case, they don't want users to reverse-engineer their app or look at logs that might inadvertently leak information about how to reverse-engineer their app. It is pointless, I know, but some security consultant has created a checkbox which must be checked at all costs.
This isn't a rhetorical question. There's no big red warning on the developer options screen saying it's dangerous. I haven't heard about real-world attacks leveraging developer settings. I suppose granting USB debug to an infected PC is dangerous, but if you're in that situation, you're already pwned.
Is there a real vulnerability nobody talks about?
Android wants good / regular users to pass things like Play Integrity with the strongest verdicts.
This helps app distributors to separate regular good users from custom clients, API scripting etc that is often used to coordinate scamming, create bots, etc. If an app developer can just toss anyone who doesn't pass Play Integrity checks in the trash, they can increase friction for malicious developers.
It is like mandating that people use rainjackets in the rain to avoid getting cancer.
Have these companies sent out their people to old age homes to teach old people how to use their tech and how avoid scams? If you lock the system down at max level, scams will just move offline again or find another way. Same if they build backdoors into encryption or make chats data available to gov agents: all illicit comms will just move off the network or find another smarter way. Its just how nature works, we are seeing tech-evolution in realtime.
And you blame Google for this? First of all, banks chose to make apps work this way, not Google. Moreover, they chose this likely due to scams. That proves scamming on android IS an issue that needs some technical solution.
Why does google allow apps to access this info?
But this process seems pretty reasonable to me.
I'd like to think it is due in part to the efforts of F-Droid and others.
Waiting a day, once, to disable this protection doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I'd probably do it once when I got a phone and then forget about it.
I happen to have developer mode enabled right now, for no good reason other than I never disabled last time I needed it. Haven't had any issues with any apps.
I actually think these protections could help mitigate scammers.
I disagree with this. Won't somebody who need to sideload something will just try again the next day...
Enable dev mode, sideload the apk, then disable dev mode. I'd argue that it is poor security practice to keep developer mode enabled long-term on a phone that is used for everyday activities, such as banking.
That said, it may be that I've simply been lucky and have an encountered that yet. So I'll be keeping an eye out for it.
[1] https://liberapay.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberapay [3] https://opencollective.com/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Collective
If we start today, we could have a new phone in 2-3 years. Future generations will thank us.
It's not just phones. There is a concerted movement by massively-moneyed folks to destroy the fabric of open society, so there are a number of different areas that need attention. A coordinated effort across the breadth of society to restore, maintain or improve the foundations of open society.
An open society is a society where people can freely express ideas, question authority, practice different beliefs, and participate in public life under the protection of laws and individual rights. It is usually marked by free speech, rule of law, pluralism, relatively open debate, and institutions that allow peaceful change.
It's definitely doable, but the product has to be appealing to users, which also seems doable as phones already peaked in capability and making a good phone now is more about polish in build + software than being technologically ahead of the competition.
I consider my 2yo mid-range phone a great phone, and with today's politics owning my phone is in the top-3 things I'd like my next phone to improve on, not a better camera, screen, battery, slimmer build nor gimmicky stuff (ok, maybe an IR to replace remotes or LoRa support would be kind of cool)
First phones, then lobbying. As citizens of an open society, government exists to serve us, not the other way around. With enough users, they will have to respond. As I said, there are a number of areas that need attention and a coordinated effort across the breadth of society to restore, maintain and improve the foundations of an open society.
They called it total information awareness. They pretended to bury it. All they did was hide their intentions from the public. They even spied on Congress and they spied on presidential candidates. If they had no decorum for those folks imagine what they are willing to do to collect information on the public.
I really wish this was true. It should be true. It used to be true. But I don't think it is now.
> With enough users, they will have to respond.
Well, yeah. But even if we had millions of people lined up (which we don't) it still wouldn't be enough to force a positive response.
Frankly there's too much money wrapped up in this now. Because of that, open computing will always be under attack. I hate coming off as so defeatist, but what we need is a culture change, and a new device which is (from the perspective of the 99%) worse and more expensive than Android isn't going to get us that.
Banks are required to interoperate using open API in the EU. EU managed to cripple this requirement, by not requiring open api access to regular customers, but only to accredited organizations. There's more work to be done on this front.
At least half of the apps I use on a daily basis come from f-droid. This enforced 24-hour wait is simply not acceptable. Android has always been a far inferior overall user experience compared to iPhone. Android's _only_ saving grace was that I could put my own third-party open-source apps on it. There is nothing left keeping me on Android now.
I'll probably get an iPhone next, but I do sincerely hope this hastens progress on a real "Linux phone" for the rest of us. Plasma Mobile (https://plasma-mobile.org) looks very nice indeed. I'll be more than happy to contribute to development and funding.
Personally, I am willing to just ditch the Android, get an iPhone as a "contact- and banking-only" device, and drag with me some sort of small computer everywhere. I've already dragged a linux retroconsole to a large number of places and have watched videos and listened to music and even edited code through it. May as well do the obvious and call it quits on phones-for-non-phone purposes entirely if phones will be so dedicated to being shitboxes.
I own my device, I choose the software running on it. Create friction points and I will chose another platform to execute my software.
95% of the apps i use are ''side loaded''. that includes a web browser, file browser, all the fossify apps for things like messaging, phone/contacts -- so the phone would be basically be a paperweight until that restriction is removed
Fuck Google for doing this, and Play Integrity making me unable to use banks is even worse.
FWIW you can buy a Pixel (new or 2nd hand) and install GrapheneOS via the Web https://grapheneos.org/install/web with nothing (genuinely nothing) installed on your computer and get it working in ~15min (depending on your connection to download the ROM) out of which maybe ~2min will be your interacting with the setup process.
I initially bought an /e/OS precisely with your requirement, namely I "just" want a phone that works when I receive it, no tinkering, but having installed GrapheneOS myself few days (or weeks?) ago I can tell you, it's really straightforward.
Not 100% accurate. You need a browser that supports WebUSB[0] which are just Chromium based ones, not Safari or Firefox.
[0]https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebUSB_API
Also GrapheneOS has in my experience decent banking app support outside of a handful of apps (including, ironically, my main bank which disabled GrapheneOS support a week or two ago). There is a maintained list of working apps that you can see for yourself: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
GrapheneOS has full support for Play Integrity[0].
[0]: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
My European banking and credit card apps work fine on GrapheneOS because they don't require the strong integrity level.
Google is using Play Integrity at the strong level to shut down competition. It's kinda ironic, since GrapheneOS is much more secure than the many phones out there with abysmal device security and slow updates that Google does accept with strong integrity.
The intent of the comment stands though.
I meant to point out that GrapheneOS has perfectly good support for verifying device integrity via Hardware Attestation, just not the method which requires Google to acknowledge the OS signing keys.
Which bank, specifically, requires an app for the purpose of 2FA? Further, what is the 2FA process for logging in to the app itself - wouldn't you need a second form of authentication that's not the app in that instance? If so, is that form of 2FA not allowed when logging in via desktop/laptop?
I inquire because I use multiple different banks, CC providers and financial services, but have never once been required to use an app, even with "mobile" banks like Simple or One.
Yes indeed registering the mobile application itself requires first another form of authentication, typically an SMS confirming the number plus a physical card with a physical card reader. You then input the resulting token in the app which validates it and then you don't need the card reader anymore while you rely on the mobile app. AFAICT the physical card reader options is not offered on some mobile payment options. I do not know if they are phasing it out of if it is because another method exists, namely if you have NOT registered their mobile application as a 2FA method, can you still use the physical card and card reader. I do not know that.
To be clear they do NOT require an app per se. They do though if you want to use online services, including payments, bank transfer, reading specific kind of documents, adding specific recipients for recurring transfer, transfer above thresholds, etc.
Hope it helps. If I missed something happy to try to clarify. Also FWIW and AFAICT it's getting more and more common for online services from bank in the EU.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
The only thing I have really found missing is Google Pay support for contactless payment (because Google doesn't want to allow GrapheneOS, but there are alternatives like Curve).
Phones, by their nature, are always internet connected (obviously there are instances where that isn't the case)...so if 90% of my apps are actually just web apps then that's fine. The opensource aspect of this should be: I build and run my own infrastructure (on cloud servers or my own servers) that serves up the web apps.
Sure, this isn't something that 'normal' people would do...but they aren't side loading apps anyway.
The web is decentralised, as long as we choose it to be. We need to take advantage of this property.
It's not a win by any means. I hope that we don't stop making noise.
It's a a defeat, albeit a minor one. The defeats will escalate until there's nothing left to lose. "Normies" don't care and the tech people who do care are fewer and further between than you'd think.
Yet, they are concerned about this.
It has nothing to do with safety, but everything to do with control.
I remember when Google disabled call recording in Android, so you no longer could record scammers. Thanks to recording I was able to get money back from insurance company that claimed they absolutely didn't sell me this and that over the phone (paid for premium insurance and got basic).
Citation needed. My Pixel 7a with the latest updates has settings for call recording in the phone app. Since I never screwed around with it, I'd assume these are the defaults:
Call recording is turned on, with "asks to record calls" set
Automatically delete recordings is "never"
Automatically record calls with non-contacts is off
No specific numbers to automatically record calls are set
There is also a note that you have to agree to their ToS to use it, and I'd also suggest being careful if you live in a jurisdiction that requires two-party consent for recording.
In any case, I'm of the opinion that if F-Droid goes, I'm basically going to treat this as a feature phone and stay away from third-party apps in general aside from "musts" like banking.
As for the IDs, I think what happens is that Google sees no need to have hobbyists anymore in the ecosystem. Companies are easier to deal with, easier to change ecosystem to what's needed for Google. While for app development companies, there will be a single enterprise account with some ID used for many developers. And companies just shut up and follow almost any non-financial requirements Google wants to add.
In contrast, opensource developers frequently go public advocating for user privacy and data prorection, while companies tend to be on the same side as Google squeezing any bit of personal user data to sell it for any margin possible.
Is any open mobile device and OS ecosystem possible at this point of time, other than the hobbyist one? With closed gates of LTE/5G ecosystem it seems there's no such possible at all.
Google has become an extremely selfish company.
Most of the apps on my phone are installed from F-Droid. I guess the next time I get a new phone I'll have to wait at least 24 hours for it to become useful.
I'm seriously considering Graphene for a next personal device and whatever the cheapest iOS device is for work.
When you offer a free service, by definition of it being free, you can't hold consumers of that service accountable for not furthering your revenue. They are impeding revenue only if it's not actually free (or only under false pretenses) which dismantles your first sentence here.
I wonder how this will play out in the phones coming out of the Motorola+GrapheneOS partnership.
The one time per device (not per app/install) is annoying, but seems like a reasonable tradeoff between preventing bad installs and allowing legit installs. I can't think of any obviously better ways.
I realise some disagree with the entire premise. I think refusing to accept the reason given doesn't advance the discussion though and I am very interested in what a better experience that is trying to solve the same problems could look like.
We use Android based devices internally with apps which aren't signed. I've had way too much trouble with Google flagging an internal app as problematic and then getting no where with Google "support" when we still used Google play.
The 24 hour wait is especially problematic because we often simply factory reset a device and preload it of there is any form of trouble.
This is just a power grab to lock down the ecosystem more. And ironically this seems to because of the Epic lawsuit. Google is now aligning with the absolute minimum they saw Apple needed to implement.
My solution is educating about smartphones and computers first. Not in an in-depth way, but people need to understand what "application", "verified" means and what are the risks. I think android cleaned up the abstraction enough to make this possible.
Being able to tell if an app came from a trusted company or not is a good thing, but I would rather such a solution be managed in an OS-independent way, not controlled by Google. Applications not authenticated by a company should not be second-tier citizens, but there should be a clear warning (and the users should already know the difference before even seeing this warning).
I think the scams and phishing also expose another important problem that nobody tried to tackle yet - you can't authenticate calls, sms messages or emails. There is no good way of telling if it's actually your bank calling you, or if it's just a scammer.
In the end, we also need to accept that not all scams can be prevented, at some point if someone is calling as a friend of your family member, and is asking to urgently transfer money to an unknown account, and you fall for this... I really can't think of a technological measure that would've helped, it's only you and your common sense.
98% of people literally do not care and/or are too dumb to understand. You could force them at gunpoint to sit in the education class, and give them a simple basic quiz afterwards, and they'd get half the answers wrong. They will continue to not even read what's on their screen, and just click the big highlighted button every time they see one.
At some point, if you are unwilling to learn basic facts about your environment, and you don't have a guardian, then you will get hurt. I don't necessarily mean by a computer. I think that's fine and I don't think a patronizing solution by a corporation that clearly wants more control over society is a necessary help.
There's no solutions because they specifically crafted the problem to not be solvable. No amount of compromises will stop them from advancing further.
Would welcome evidence to the contrary. Is this truly a threat model that's seen in the wild?
My gut says no because social engineering is about hijacking legitimate, first-party processes. Scammers attack login credentials, MFA flows, and use first-party apps to maintain access (think remote control software like TeamViewer). These apps come from the Play Store, not from meticulously curated collections like F-Droid, and not from somebody pressuring you to sideload an APK.
And if scammers decide to use sideloading as an attack vector -- then like all the other security gates that can be defeated via social engineering, I expect they will find an end-run around this one as well. Either on a technical basis, or by social-engineering users into bumbling past it and on to the next stage of the scam.
Build an idiot-proof system and society will build a better idiot. And yeah, the rest of us only wind up slightly annoyed, _for now_, until Google tightens their grip further on some other flimsy pretext.
Maybe not scammers, but an abusive partner could sideload an application on your phone to spy on you. I've seen that before within my relatives.
I also never got targeted by pig butchering scams[1], and neither did my immediate friends/family, so I guess those must not exist either?
And here are apps straight from the App Store [0] that are outright scams. How dos this protect people from these?
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/pig-b...
That's because most fraud uses social tactics and LEGITIMATE tools/software.
Impinging on my property rights cannot and will not protect fraud victims.
I really extremely rarely open the Play Store.
F-Droid is my place to. Even if the tools are simple, they are reliable.
Maybe Google is also scared, that with coding agents some OSS Tools improve that much that commercial alternatives don't matter.
This is smart.
But putting my design hat on here: couldn't this be the whole approach? When enabling the "unverified apps" setting, the phone could terminate all running apps and calls before walking the user through the process.
Why do you even need the rest of the complexity -- if the fear is that non-savvy users are being coached into installing malware,then preventing comms while fiddling with the settings seems pretty OK?
You could even combine this with randomised UI, labels etc. so it's not possible to coach someone in advance about what to press.
No, because protecting users is just an excuse. The overreach is the goal.
This will sadly still put a major damper on adoption of open source apps, while giving a false sense of security that apps from the Play store are safe.
Years down the road, the low usage of apps installed from outside the Play store will be used as an argument for removing the functionality completely.
We get occasional support tickets about the popups that come when trying to run a regular installer while in this mode. Luckily, people can disable "S" mode, but there's no way to re-enable "S" mode without a fresh install.
1: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/switching-out-of...
Wondering how long the blogpost would be if it explained what the flow for corpoloading applications approved by Google's shareholders would be?
Oh, how times have changed. And so many believed this and repeated it.
Even if that's not the case, I'd imagine attestation apps like banking apps would require some kind of identity verification in exchange for trusting Graphene's keys.
In principle it doesn't make sense to leave any escape hatch, but I guess as always, it boils down to economy.
There are alternatives that don’t: Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, PureOS, postmarketOS, Sailfish OS.
I understand there is some problem trying to be solved here, but honestly this is still quite frustrating for legitimate uses. If this is the direction that computing is moving, I'd really rather there were separate products available for power users/devs that reflected our different usage.
This is ridiculous. Google is trying to dismantle the concept of ownership and personal autonomy. Do not give them any ground.
Do you think there's two groups, and the people that cared simply went with Android and so there was never this outcry about installing free software on iOS, or that this will last only as long as the change still feels recent and like a new restriction?
2) You can use ADB to immediately install unregistered apps. ADB installs are not subject to the waiting period.
I forgot 3) instruct my users how to use ADB from another computer to install my competing app. Awesome.
4) How can we install apps made by devs who won't do the verification dance with Google?
Thus, you can still install unregistered apps if they're distributed via F-Droid or other sources, but to do so, you will need to use ADB and/or go through the new advanced flow. And remember, the new advanced flow is a one-time process - once you go through with it, you can allow your device to install unregistered apps indefinitely!
Bad implementation. Like the SAVE act that requires you to bring your up to date passport just to vote. It's clearly user hostile.
Even before Google's edict I disabled enforced Android updates in case that at Google's demand manufacturers slipstreamed some restrictive code that cannot be later removed. One only has to look at the disastrous precedent with Windows 11 to see how insidious and ever-increasing lock-in works.
Fact is Big Tech cannot be trusted and there's a long lineage to prove it—MS Windows, Sun/OpenOffice and many others—and now Android. To avoid future calamities like this and to ensure survival of F-Droid, et al we urgently need to break Big Tech's nexus with open source independent of Big Tech's control.
I can only hope more manufacturers are prepared to fork Android to cater for the upcoming demand.
I wanted to be negative about the whole idea, as due to my age I'm resentful of not being allowed to use my own computer as I see fit.
On the other hand, in principle I see what they're going for here. The only decent argument for these user-hostile lockdowns is the malware issue.
This is just spreading fear. If you're being coerced to do this, then you're in a much bigger danger than what a rogue application sideloaded to your phone represents.
I will die on this hill.
What stops scammers from simply creating a new hobbyist account for every 20 people they scam?
If you get most/all of your apps from F-Droid, they're essentially establishing a policy of "any time you get a new phone, you can't use it for 24 hours", which is... insane?
When I side-load open-source apps for other people, I want to do it right in the moment, not activate the feature, and the next time I see them (like half a year later), install the app.
When Google announced there would be an alternative installation method, I did not expect such a mess...
"I did not expect such a mess", I certainly did. Another arm of the push to remove anonymity online.
Orwell couldn't even dream of the invasive monitoring that exists right now.
I don't quite understand how those installs would be tracked. If I create a "hobbyist" account and share the apk, are the devices that install that app all reporting it to Google? To my knowledge, Google only does this through the optional Play Protect system, is that now no longer optional? I'd like to know if my computer is reporting every app I install up to Google.
Pretty sure this is a Play Services thing, so I don't know that the phone model really matters. But regardless this is on a few different devices: my primary REDMAGIC 9S Pro (Android 15), Surface Duo 2 (Android 12), and my YONGNUO YN455 (Android 10).
As others have suggested, there should be an option skip the 24hr wait when activating at setup time. Or, alternatively, when the previous phone one is transferring from has it enabled it should be without wait time on the new one.
This still isn't a good idea. It's not going to materially improve security for anyone, so all the negatives (beaten to death here and elsewhere) are still top-of-mind.
What concrete change to the policy would be a strict Pareto improvement keeping just those two concerns in mind?
There are at least three moral arguments that can be made:
- Google, as a capitalist company, is ignoring the privacy and FOSS implications, and is guilty of screwing the customer due to greed
- Regular, non-tech folks are constantly being robbed of their privacy, money, and/or identity through malware and social engineering attacks, and Google is guilty of not doing enough to protect them
- Enabling malware delivery and use props up criminals and known bad actors (e.g., north korean), and by not stopping this Google is guilty of supporting these bad actors
I'm not seeing either of those last two points being made strongly. Maybe it's just not the target audience — people here aren't as likely to be scammed, and few of us are regularly thinking about north korea — but I'd expect to see more consideration for the costs of inaction here.
Personally I think there should be a lot more work done on how to secure arbitrary apps from arbitrary sources so that they are unable to hurt people, rather than focusing so much on on preventing random apps from being installed in the first place. This would help the average person as well, since these walled gardens still make mistakes. But it’s not realistic to put a box in everyone’s pockets that’s three taps away from sending all their money to some dude in Laos.
We know from Nigerian email scams that these things can stretch out days, weeks, months, all to get the victim to do the thing.
> We know from Nigerian email scams that these things can stretch out days, weeks, months, all to get the victim to do the thing.
but it seems govts arent interested or incapable of solving the causes (education, opportunity, destitution, etc etc) and probably also influx of scams from sanctioned countries (again a society/world level problem) that cant participate in the world trade etc...
so they lean on the technology companies to lockdown things more because what else can they do?
There's another class of scams where the draw is fear - "your son is in jail", "your bank account is under investigation and will be closed in 24 hours if you don't act now", &c. They rely on time pressure to prevent the victim from reaching out directly to the parties they're lying about and disproving the scam.
This is aimed at that particular type of scam and that particular type of victim.
Companies get away from this because they distance themselves from their customers and they have systems to hide feedback.
Obviously permissions would be a problem, as you can't update the app manifest, so there would either have to be one shell app per publisher (which would at least solve the problem of installing updates for their apps) or the shell would need its own internal system for managing permissions (like a browser does). Maybe it could also sandbox different apps from each other in different subprocesses, unless that needs root privileges, but maybe it's possible with Landlock?
Or we can always fall back to the "sweet solution" Steve Jobs offered us with the original iPhone, and just let the web browser be the shell.
Or implement everything as WeChat mini programs.
No, I'm afraid this is tipping the scale of control in Google's favor.
You have a similar wait if you get it shipped to you from Amazon.
Is the instant gratification essential?
I'm not sure how an unlockable bootloader that comes locked and a signed and verified software only that can be unlocked is actually fundamentally different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty
Both are "true", to different people. Europeans tend to think our positive freedom to go bankrupt from medical bills is a bad one, for example.
Your freedom to unlock the bootloader and the general public's freedom from having to get a masters degree in cybersecurity to survive modern society are butting heads with each other.
When the user decision to unlock (or "side"-load, for that matter) is required to be authorized by the vendor, though, is when I feel like I no longer have control over my own hardware.
Now, phone thieves just ask you at knifepoint or gunpoint to log out of iCloud
(I'm being a bit overly cynical there but IMO only the tiniest bit.)
Because if that "enforcement" is Google then they are still engineering a situation where they hold the keys to the kingdom. They may benevolently let you install what you want, but the sword of damacles will hang over everyone forever, with the darth vader contract in full force ("pray we don't change the deal any further"). If nothing else, it will have a chilling effect. But more than likely, it will attract regulators like moths to a flame to coerce Google into banning their favorite open source apps that they don't like. In other words: it won't solve anything at all, really.
Do I love it? Absolutely not. But F-Droid was facing an existential threat from the early early versions of the proposal and now will continue to live. Again, I don't love it but this is a huge change to the fate of F-Droid.
I'm extremely worried for the future of open source on mobile operating systems. We traded freedom for convenience.
"Everyone can still access F-Droid, it just has to live in the Play Store. We're bound by law to support alternative app stores now anyways. Everyone wins!"
* confirm that you are not tricked
* restart phone and re-authenticate
* wait one day
* confirm with biometrics that you know what you are doing
* decide if you only want unrestricted installs for 1 week or forever
* confirm that you accept the risks
* enjoy the few apps that still have developers motivated to develop for a user-base willing to put up with this
The fact that I can sideload whatever I need and stay out of Google's ecosystem is the whole reason I use Android. Given the miserable choice between two fully locked-down platforms, why would I pick theirs?
I just remain skeptical that this tactic is successful on modern Android, with all the settings and scare screens you need to go through in order to sideload an app and grant dangerous permissions.
I expect scammers will move to pre-packaged software with a bundled ADB client for Windows/Mac, then the flow is "enable developer options" -> "enable usb debugging" -> "install malware and grant permissions with one click over ADB". People with laptops are more lucrative targets anyway.
The use case they're trying to protect against is malware authors "coaching" users to install their app.
In November, they specifically called out anonymous malware apps with the permission to intercept text messages and phone calls (circumventing two-factor authentication). https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...
After today's announced policy goes into effect, it will be easier to coach users to install a Progressive Web App ("Installable Web Apps") than it will be to coach users to sideload a native Android app, even if the Android app has no permissions to do anything more than what an Installable Web App can do: make basic HTTPS requests and store some app-local data. (99% of apps need no more permissions than that!)
I think Google believes it should be easy to install a web app. It should be just as easy to sideload a native app with limited permissions. But it should be very hard/expensive for a malware author to anonymously distribute an app with the permission to intercept texts and calls.
But these developer verification policies don't make any exceptions for permission-light apps, nor do they make it harder to sideload apps which request dangerous permissions, they just identify developers. I also suspect that making developer verification dependent on app manifest permissions opens up a bypass, as the package manager would need to check both on each update instead of just on first install.
And how hard/expensive should it be for the developer of a legitimate F/OSS app to intercept calls/texts?
This should not be required for apps that do HTTPS requests and store app-local data, like 99%+ of all apps, including 99% of F-Droid apps.
But, in my opinion, the benefit of anonymity to you is much smaller than the harm of anonymous malware authors coaching/coercing users to install phone-takeover apps.
(I'm sure you and I won't agree about this; I bet you have a principled stand that you should be able to anonymously distribute malware phone-takeover apps because "I own my device," and so everyone must be vulnerable to being coerced to install malware under that ethical principle. It's a reasonable stance, but I don't share it, and I don't think most people share it.)
But yes they are my devices, and I should be able to do exactly what I want with them. If I'm forced to deal with other developers incredibly shitty decisions around how they treat VoIP numbers, guess who's going to have a stack of phones with cheap plans in the office instead of paying a VoIP provider...
But no, I have no interest in actually distributing software like that further than than the phones sitting in my office.
Getting someone to verify their identity before they have the permission to completely takeover my phone feels pretty reasonable to me. It should be a cheap, one-time process to verify your identity and develop an app with that much power.
I can already hear the reply, "What a slippery slope! First Google will make you verify identity for complete phone takeovers, but soon enough they'll try to verify developer identity for all apps."
But if I'm forced to choose between "any malware author can anonymously intercept texts and calls" or "only identified developers can do that, and maybe someday Google will go too far with it," I'm definitely picking the latter.
That's why I don't think the extra prompts matter much beyond raising attacker cost a bit. Google is patching the visible path while the scam just moves one hop sideways.
I don't believe that it is. I follow this "scene" pretty closely, and that means I read about successful scams all the time. They happen in huge numbers. Yet I have never encountered a reliable report of one that utilized a "sideloaded"[1] malicious app. Not once. Phishing email messages and web sites, sure. This change will not help counter those, though.
I don't even see what you could accomplish with a malicious app that you couldn't otherwise. I would certainly be interested to hear of any real world cases demonstrating the danger.
[1] When I was a kid, this was called "installing."
That's why I'm inclined to believe Google is just using safety as an excuse to further leverage their monopoly.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...?
Edit: I've put one up there now - if there's a better article, let us know and we can change it again. I put the submitted URL in the toptext.
Just call it "installing".
Let’s be clear here.
It's time to leave Android.
Call me naive, but despite the feeling in my gut I was holding out for Google's answer. Reading what it is, this is still going way too far. You essentially need to be a developer in order to sideload, which brings Android down to parity with iOS.
No, being able to sideload (on my phones, AND friends and family as-needed) is a fundamental computing right. This is my personal belief. And this move by Google is a step too far.
The search begins...
- You need to enable developer mode
- You need to click through a few scare dialogs
- You need to wait 24h once
I wonder how long this will last before they lock it down further. There was a lot of pushback this time around and they still ended up increasing the temperature of the metaphorical boiling frog. It still seems like they're pushing towards the Apple model where those who don't want to self-dox and/or pay get a very limited key (what Google currently calls "limited distribution accounts").
This is so overt.
https://security.googleblog.com/2025/09/pixel-android-truste...
Again, can we, please, stop call it side-loading. I'm not sliding in anything "from the side" on the sly, I am simply installing an app of my choice on my damn phone.
Also, was this really necessary Google?
Alternatives like GrapheneOS and Lineage are the way to go for right now, but I worry as things get more and more locked down that those options won't work with a lot of apps.
I am increasingly interested in a dual-prong approach of building a parallel world of OSS apps, platforms, etc, plus an adversarial inter-op project for duping and wrapping apps/services from the commercial/normie world. We have some solid bases with Android/Graphene, Linux more broadly, wine, and Android VMs like Waydroid. Even if things don't get a lot of users, if the users it has are highly technical on average things can probably chug along.
I appreciate if some good samaritan can link to it.
Like when Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, et al. cooperated with¹ the unconstitutional and illegal² PRISM program to hand over bulk user data to the NSA without a warrant? That kind of harm to my personal data that I did not intend?
If so, I'd love to hear an explanation of why every Google/Alphabet, Facebook/Meta, and Microsoft application haven't been removed for being malware already.
¹ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...
² https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-court-mass...
Google's decision to walk back the supposed freedom to run anything you like removes user choice from the marketplace and harms consumers.
How the advanced flow works for users
Enable developer mode in system settings: Activating this is simple. This prevents accidental triggers or "one-tap" bypasses often used in high-pressure scams.
Confirm you aren't being coached: There is a quick check to make sure that no one is talking you into turning off your security. While power users know how to vet apps, scammers often pressure victims into disabling protections.
Restart your phone and reauthenticate: This cuts off any remote access or active phone calls a scammer might be using to watch what you’re doing.
Come back after the protective waiting period and verify: There is a one-time, one-day wait and then you can confirm that this is really you who’s making this change with our biometric authentication (fingerprint or face unlock) or device PIN. Scammers rely on manufactured urgency, so this breaks their spell and gives you time to think.
Install apps: Once you confirm you understand the risks, you’re all set to install apps from unverified developers, with the option of enabling for 7 days or indefinitely. For safety, you’ll still see a warning that the app is from an unverified developer, but you can just tap “Install Anyway.”I don't have a Google account on my Androids. But I can't remove play services on them, sadly. As an intermediate protection I just don't sign in to Google play, that gives them at least a bit less identifying information to play with.
I hope this can be done without a Google account.
You will not need a Google account.
This is exactly what Google intended. This is why they started off by announcing completely removing device owner chosen installs (this is not side loading! It's simply installing.) and announced only apps allowed by Google would be available for install.
They knew it would cause backlash. They anticipated that and planned ahead faking a compromise.
They are trying to boil us like frogs by so slowly raising the temperature so we do not notice. Whenever the water gets so warm that people do notice they cool it down a little. But they will turn up the the heat again!
This 24h window is designed to make device owner controlled installs as unattractive as possible. They try to reduce it as much as they can while having plausible deniability ("You can still install apps not whitelisted by us"). They want to get the concept of people installing software of their own choice onto their own device as far away from the mainstream as possible. They want to marginalize it. They want to slowly and quietly kill off the open Android app ecosystem by reducing the user base.
The next step will be them claiming that barely anyone is installing apps not signed by them anyway. First they make people jump through ridiculous hoops to install non whitelisted apps, then they use the fact that few people jump through these hoops to justify removing the ability altogether.
Google does not care about preventing scams. If they did they would do something against the massive amount of scam ads that they host. Scams are just their "think of the children".
Do not play by their playbook!
Do not give them ground!
We must not accept any restrictions on the software we run on our own devices. The concept of ownership, personal autonomy and choice are being dismantled. Our freedom is the target of a slow, long waging war. This is yet another attack.
We must not compromise with the attacker. We must not give them any centimeter of ground.
And Google thinks they can pull this? I hope regulators make it very clear that this is the wrong direction, and with record fines.
The problem is that you often need a smartphone running either Android or iOS to participate in modern life. Unfortunately when running Android many apps that one might be more or less forced to use do not just require AOSP, but expect the presence of the proprietary Google services malware.
If we want to create an independent mobile OS AOSP might actually be a good start. We're just faced with a world that is actively harmful to people having control over their device and data.
Its just installing an app.
Apple and Google can now credibly claim to governments to have nearly ubiquitous computing platforms that they can guarantee do not run any software that is not approved or antithetical to the goals of authorities. This makes the device safe for storing things like government IDs. OSs and Browsers will be required to present these IDs or at first just attest to them.
Before posting online, renting a server, using an app you will have to idenitfy yourself using your phone or similarly locked down PC (i.e. mac).
The introduction is under the guise as always of protecting the children. In reality they are removing your rights to privacy and free speech.
The 7 days vs forever choice is still crappy and gives me a bit of bad vibes considering they are the ones that pulled the youtube promotions (shorts, games) you can never turn off forever, so there's the concern they will remove the forever option from Android in the future. But as long as they don't end up doing that, it's fine for me.
Also, I do think it would be a good idea to make an exception to the 24-hour wait time if the phone is new enough (e.g. onboarding steps were completed less than one day ago), and/or through some specific bypass method using ADB. Power users who get a new phone want to set it up with all their cool apps and trinkets right away, and it's not good user experience to have to use ADB to install every single sideloaded app. Meanwhile a a regular user getting scammed right after getting a new phone is statistically unlikely.
More people moving to GrapheneOS is the best tool we have against Google's continued and escalating hostility to user freedom and privacy and general anti-competitive conduct. (Of course, you could ditch having a smartphone entirely..., but if you're willing to consider that you don't need me plugging an alternative).
Curious how this will play out for niche apps that aren’t on the Play Store.
What's the solution for 3rd world countries where 80% phones are android (and usually old/low spec) that balances freedom for knowledgeable users vs security/safety for the majority of users? you can roughly understand education level and tech literacy for the majority of people in 3rd world countries.
The truth is that 99.9% of the people don't care. The remaining 0.1% is perfectly capable to use GrapheneOS.
Yeah, I know... Stockholm syndrome...
Although I may not have to live with it, as none of my present devices are recent enough to still receive ota updates.
Context: I don't use alternative app stores. I occasionally side-load updates to apps that I've written myself, and very occasionally third party apps from trusted sources.
How much can you twist words and language to engage in fear mongering? The headline could just as well have been "install", and "free choice" and "Google gatekeeps".
If so, it's clear that none of these changes are actually to protect users.
This is the same thing since it applies to all apps, not just apps that need special permissions.
From the article I understood this to be a one-time delay, as opposed to having to go through the same waiting process for every single "unlicensed" app I want to install (which I would not accept). I'm just waiting 24 hours once to permanently change my device into a mode where I can install any app I like without any restrictions/delays whatsoever.
Google details new process to install unverified Android apps. The sentence is much more clear using established language. Not "side-load", whatever that means.
- New toaster requires permission from manufacturer to toast bread from a local bakery.
- Car manufacturer to vet all passengers. Any unidentified and unvetted passengers will disable the vehicle.
- TV manufacturer requires 7 days advance notice of what you want to watch.
Let's be realistic, there IS a problem with sideloaded apps being downloaded by ignorant people, and they do get scammed/hacked or whatever.
This leads to unhappy people complaining to their banks, politicians and media, these in turn starts lighting a fire under Googles bottom.
So, my point being, how do we solve the ACTUAL problem with rogue apps then?
Google could make a mobile website to take an app apk and verify it if its secure and offer to install it back to android users ...
My bias, former Android app developer.
This is using the increase in attacks to do a business monopoly goal instead...
Meanwhile from the Play Store I have Bitwarden, Firefox, 2 banking apps, a few airline apps, Wireguard and Whatsapp. So I actually have more from F-Droid than the Play Store from what I regularly use.
I switched from iOS to Android about three years ago. I saved all the APKs for everything I installed (or updated). When I got a new phone last fall it was pleasantly like geting a new PC. I imported my SMS and contacts from my last backup, then installed all the apps I use and imported or manually set any settings I wanted to customize.
The biggest pain was having to manually logon the couple of sites I allow to keep persistent cookies since device owners aren't allowed to just import/export cookies from mobile Chrome.
I sideload no apps. I install most apps from either F-Droid main, or an other repo.
> Why those apps are not in a store?
All of them are in a repository. Just only the state sponsored ID-app is only available via the ad-infected Google RAT delivery service, also known as Google Play.
Why'd I put my app into their store if I don't agree with the store owner's policies?
Can I keep this freedom?
There are some true gems such as:
dear google: fuck off and die. May something worth the resources it consumes grow from your fetid corpse.
"Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither."
Most of the comments here seem to agree that they are. Some people have clearly been so brainwashed that they can't figure it out.
Dangerous software is software that is not making Google money and that does not give Google control.
Now if only Android would allow for stronger sandboxing of apps (i.e. lie to them about any and all system settings).
The security justification for this measure is not credible.
Is it really worth executing payments, maps, geospatial APIs, etc. on one platform if >30% of your customer base can't use it and it changes every 6 months (because that's what they've engineered)? No. Who wants to maintain that?
Then what is the interface people are pushed to? The browser, where Google historically dominates.
The reality is that users should take responsibility but are not allowed to, so Google takes over and makes a profit.
You don't need a CS degree to use a phone, but you can be a power user by time....but not anymore, the company needs you to stay fool and pay for "help" (not directly sometime).
This is a marketing tactic, similar to a side-load.
"Only 0.0004% of the userbase installs after the initial 24 period, greater than x% take 48 hours or more so the 24hr window is now 72hr", and repeat until its all nice and locked down for them.
"Your google play account will now need ID to prevent children accessing adult software" will come along not long after. For the children.
-.-
If you can enable this once, forever, after a 24 hour cooldown period I don't hate this as much as I hated some of the other proposals from Google. It'll just be something you do as part of the setup for a new phone.
Even though I understand the design decisions here, I think we're going about this the wrong way. Sure, users can be pressured into allowing unverified apps and installing malware, and adding a 24-hour delay will probably reduce the number of victims, but ultimately, the real solution here is user education, not technological guardrails.
If I want to completely nuke my phone with malware, Google shouldn't stand in my way. Why not just force me to read some sort of "If someone is rushing you to do this, it is probably an attack" message before letting me adjust this setting?
Anyone who ignores that warning is probably going to still fall for the scam. If anything, scammers will just communicate the new process, and it risks sounding even more legitimate if they have to go through more Google-centric steps.
Also, other commenters have mentioned that adb is unaffected by this which makes it seem like less of a problem, to me at least. Still inconvenient that even if you adb install fdroid you can't install apps directly from it.
Developers can choose to not undergo verification, thereby remaining anonymous. The only change is that their applications will need to be installed via ADB and/or this new advanced flow on certified Android devices.
Either way, you can still distribute your apps wherever you want. If you verify your identity, then there are no changes to the existing installation flow from a user perspective. If you choose not to verify your identity, then the installation will still be possible but only through high-friction methods (ADB, advanced flow). These methods are high-friction so anonymous scammers can't easily coerce their victims into installing malicious software.
Are apps like this more dangerous than browsing to a website? I thought they were entirely sandboxed from the rest of the device?
Depending on your threat model, it might be mostly harmless
"The only change" – with all due respect, are you even listening to yourself? The "only change" is that you, as a developer, will be completely excluded from publishing apps in the Play Store and that people effectively won't be able to install your app anymore! (Unless you were targeting only e.g. F-Droid users to begin with, which very few apps do.)
In essence, you are cutting down on the privacy of tens of thousands of honest developers around the world in the name of protecting users from scammers and you're pretending that 1) it's a nothingburger and 2) developers have a choice.
Google Play already requires developer verification: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
That means those apps still keep on existing, they are just more of a hassle to install.
> In addition to the advanced flow we’re building free, limited distribution accounts for students and hobbyists. This allows you to share apps with a small group (up to 20 devices) without needing to provide a government-issued ID or pay a registration fee.
i.e. Government-issued ID and fees are needed for more than 20 devices, e,g, every app on F-Droid
The trouble is, the accounts aren't meant to be anonymous. Pseudonymous at best, depending also on the country (a lot of places require government ID before you can assign a phone number, or have a central government querying system for mapping IP addresses and timestamp to the name and address of the subscriber that used it at the time). It's not like they let you create infinite Google accounts without supplying an infinite amount of fresh phone numbers or IP addresses. You also agree to the general Google privacy policy, which allows them to do anything for any purpose last I checked (a few years ago) unless you're a business customer (but then you've got a payment method in use, and they don't accept cash in the mail), such as fingerprinting as part of reCaptcha
Note that the OP is about side loading, i.e. installing apps from non-Play Store sources and thereby circumventing developer verification.
I suspect they are hoping users just give up and go to the play store instead. Google touts about "Play Protect" which scans all apps on the device, even those from unknown sources so these measures can barely be justified.
Imagine if Microsoft said you need to wait 24 hours before installing a program not from their store, which is against the entire premise of windows.
Computing, I once believed was based on an open idea that people made software and you could install it freely, yes there are bad actors, but that's why we had antivirus and other protection methods, now we're inch by inch losing those freedoms. iOS wants you to enter your date of birth now.
The future feels very uncertain, but we need to protect the little freedoms we have left, once they're gone, they're gone for good.
Assuming the requirements are actually justified, this seems like a tolerable compromise.
The onus of protecting people's wealth should fall on the bank / institution who manages that persons wealth.
Nevertheless, this solution is better than ID verification for devs.
It's nice that Zelle has checks and identity information shown to you when you're sending money, but if I click through 5 screens that say "Yes I know this person" but I actually don't.....no amount of regulation is going to solve that.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with the rant about police power and a state? Google isn't the government either. What would legislation provide that banks can't already do today?
I never said anything about it being Googles responsability, I agree it is not. And the only legislation that might be necessary over what we have is a budget directly to go after criminal fraudsters.
They're not solving that problem. They're using it as an excuse to lock down the platform further and assume more control. Any incidental benefit for user "security" is an unintended consequence of their real agenda.
Does it have a Linux kernel? Of course. But this isn't a free operating system.
RHEL has Fedora upstream. There's a group of people who regularly contribute to those projects on their own time and the userland for Fedora is made up primarily of FOSS where people routinely try to consolidate popular features into main code branches. There's a truly free software project that is the main project that someone provides paid support for. Fedora drives the evolution of the system; RHEL just gives a way to make that evolution palatable to the suits.
Android has the AOSP but it's not the driver of Android as a platform. For the most part, the evolution is driven by a bunch of closed-source applications that Google and OEMs happen to run on Android. Those parties derive competitive advantage and brand identity from the proprietary code that runs on top of the Android OS, and don't make a habit of merging much of that into the project. There are the system-wide improvements that get updated, sure, but the ethos is not to keep the code moving up the chain into the project so that anyone can take it and do what they want with it for free.
It's a hard difference to describe but it's there.
I mean how do I just take some random Android phone and patch out something I don't like in one of the apps, or improve some behavior I don't like in one of the core libraries (like allow the fucking phone to be fucking woken up predictably by a background app, without some stupid mean-well logic trying to prevent predictable behavior, because waking up for 500ms every 5 minutes is "draing the battery too much" or some such nonsense)
There's usually not even a SW distribution, let alone a sane system for updating just one thing, without downloading 3 HDDs full of dev dependencies and re-building everything. Then HW is locked down, SW is locked down on purpose and just by sheer hostility to incremental individual small changes.
Whole ecosystem has to be designed around the FOSS ethos of giving the user access to code for purpose of them being reasonably able to actually do something with it to incrementally improve their experience, and not just to look at it pretty.
Man, fuck Google. I hope this bullshit is struck down by government regulation as malicious compliance to 3rd party app stores.
I wonder if GrapheneOS will have the same level of user-hostile bullshit. That may be my salvation board right now.
Sailfish OS would be great, but unfortunately my banks don't seem to play along with it.
And no, I'm not a bot or some pro Google activist, check my github account, I even use GrapheneOS myself.
Having to wait a day for a one off isn't a big deal, if they kept it looser then you'd be shouting about the amount of scams that propagate on the platform.
Ah, its not much, just an email away ...
oh, not much it's email and a phone call away ...
Just wait 7 days ... no, it's just a month, and only one device par account? What's wrong with it? You are overreacting
Wait! Why you want to unlock your boot loader, only 0.000001% does it. You are abnormal, not the mass user
Fool me once it's on you Fool me twice ... it's on me.
We are already over twice, but none the wiser.
For now, I am rolling with my OnePlus 7 with LineageOS, till I find a phone that's not completely locked down. Yes, it's old, but it gets my job done. Once I am off all of Google's services, I'll probably get rid of Google in most part of my life.
As, someone who is a user from invite only Gmail, it's difficult, but necessary.
Helping the vulnerable should not involve that. If your only idea on how to help the vulnerable involves that, think of better ideas.
And it's not just Google, it's the m.o. of all large corporations. Another example is Epic Games, they advertise how they will fight in court against big companies like Google and Apple to defend their users. Yet they've gotten fined repeatedly for amounts in the millions, for predatory micro-transactions, and misleading minors into spending money without the consent of their parents.
Time and time again it is proven that everything these companies do, it's always for the benefit of their bottom line, and consideration for their users does not even factor into their considerations. This is no different, they want to push it because it will give them more control or make them money, and it either won't protect anyone, or that's just an unintended side effect but a good way to market it.
They sure spend billions to "help the vulnerable". Right. Like Meta here: https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
I'd say this has nothing to do with preventing scams, but to make independent software more difficult to distribute.
It's my phone. It's my software. Period.
The general population is deterred by burying a setting deep. Waiting is a dark pattern and we're not idiots.
As a non American, losing my ability to run software even if google decides that software can't enter their store feels much higher a risk.
I can bet that a few versions down the line, the "Not recommended" option of allowing installs indefinitely will become so not recommended that they'll remove it outright. Then shrink the 7 day window to 3 days or less. Or only give users one allowed attempt at installing an app, after which it's another 24 hour waiting period for you. Then ask the user to verify themselves as a developer if they want to install whatever they want. Whatever helps them turn people away from alternatives and shrink the odds of someone dislodging their monopoly, they will do. Anything to drive people to Google Play only.
1. Chrome
2. Google
3. Default browser app (w/unfamiliar generic logo)
They removed the option for Safari some time in the last two years; here's how it looked in 2024: https://imgur.com/1iBVFfc
And the cherry on top of dark UX patterns: an unchecked toggle rests at the bottom. "Ask me which app to use every time." You cannot stop getting these.
How is this legal?
* new automated UX experiments starts * the UI bot made a change that made the page unscrollable * the experiment has a much higher rate of retention then the control (because people can't scroll) * the experiment is deemed a success by results analysis (no one looks at the page to see WHY) * the experiment is blessed as the new pipeline
Such an obvious business improvement made by Gemini !
OK, if it is a bug, what are the different time frames for people experiencing this pretty serious bug?
The dressing up of purely malicious or greedy actions as merely resonable ones, that were executed poorly has become incredibly prevalent in the modern world.
This kind of thing should be illegal. The default browser is the default for a reason, to avoid this kind of stuff.
I think I’ve reported this as a bug to Google a couple times, in a couple different apps… as they do it in their other apps too.
The only thing that bothers me more are the, “sign-in with Google”, prompts on 90% of websites now. How about just giving the option to login with Google if so choose to login, and not spam it on every website just for visiting?
Google really has made the internet and worse place in so many ways.
It's indeed aggravating. Thankfully it turns out you can turn it off (and of course the option is extremely well-hidden): https://developer.chrome.com/docs/identity/fedcm/customizati...
Alas, I don't think it's a bug. A PM or VP probably got a bonus for this.
> How about just giving the option to login with Google if so choose to login, and not spam it on every website just for visiting?
Yeah this is kinda weird. I don't know if it's browser specific though. I use Firefox on my main computer and I think I still see it. Which means that the website owner opted into this weird pattern. No other auth providers do this. Just Google.
It’s a cancer on the Internet.
I'm also sure that some number of website owners don't know or care that it's annoying to some people.
Personally I've just learned to ignore it; but if it did annoy me enough I'd zap it with uBlock.
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/#wiki_g...
In short, it's what companies like IBM and Broadcom are now.
Shallow husks of their former self, mere holding companies for patents, with a complete lack of care and concern about any end-user retention.
Google search has turned completely into junk over the last two weeks. You may think "two weeks only?!", and you're right there, but this is a whole new level of stupid.
You may not be getting this where you are, but here searches are constantly prepended with human checks, searches can take up to 5+ seconds, you name it. They literally spend so little on maintaining and working on their search engine, that it's effectively unusable much of the time now. I don't care whether it's bot traffic, or what, and no it's not just me, or my ISP. This is wide-scale.
It takes so long I just click on an alternate search engine and search there. I don't have time to waste in their inanity.
Any sane and sensible company wouldn't entirely trash and destroy their mainline product, which is key to drive users to experience Google products. But this degree of sheer, unbridled arrogance is what topples empires. The thought that it really doesn't matter, flows off of google as a foul stench.
Look at Microsoft of old, the god of arrogance. Once the most dominant, powerful tech company in the world. They were king. Browser king. OS king. Everything king. Now they are barely noticed by large swaths of the market.
So goes Alphabet these days.
If they follow the path of IBM and Broadcom, they will move away from the consumer market and focus more on the enterprise. If Google fully realized that vision it would be extremely disruptive. Them shutting down Google Reader practically killed RSS for quite a while. Imagine that level of disruption with products that have mainstream appeal… mail, maps, docs, search, etc. It would be pandemonium.
I would hardly notice, TBH.
There are alternatives for all of that.
They are big in everything that is mass scale developer oriented with things like GitHub, VSCode, or all their libs, tools, and integrations (they "own" in large parts for example Python, TS, and Rust). Governments and public services are all running on Azure. So do a lot of companies; more or less all small and mid sized. They are still dominant in the gaming market, and get stronger there with every year.
Microslop was always, and still is the same Microslop. They are very successful with what they do since decades. Whether one likes that or not.
I think Valve’s play isn’t to steal tons of Microsoft’s gaming market share; their play is to just get enough of a market that game developers are incentivized to code to the APIs that work well in Proton, not whatever the latest and greatest in Windows is. If we cross that inflection point, Microsoft’s PC gaming chokehold will be on life support.
In the past 1-2 years I had to stop that, as there's a good chance I will be taken to some ad-sponsored link that has hijacked the search results.
For example, if I search 'Claude' the actual link to claude.ai will not even fit on a 1080p screen.
Also Google search degradation is partly due to the web becoming infested with AI slop and most content moving to chat apps, which are walled gardens by default.
Have they ever been more valuable than now?
Everyone loves to talk about FAANG… there is no M, why not? One would think Microsoft would belong more in that collection than Netflix, yet here we are.
In terms of technology and looking forward, what is Microsoft doing really right? Even their investment in AI seems questionable and they pushed it into their products so hard that everyone hates it. They have GitHub and VS Code, but that was an acquisition and people are always nervous, because they don’t really trust Microsoft based on their track record. Azure is fairly popular, but AWS is still the benchmark everyone talks about. There is their enterprise management software… that helped take Styker completely down last week (maybe not totally Microsoft’s fault and more the admin, but that’s still some really bad press). Did I forget something big?
Office was considered a very solid product for many generations. Windows 95 was loved. So were Windows 2000, Windows XP with the SPs, Windows 7, Windows 10.
.NET was the envy of the Java world for many years.
Microsoft had many duds but they also had some great products.
You can't sell as many products as they did without also having some good products.
When was that? My introduction to Excel was in the 1990s when a scientist asked about data corruption, and my response was "oh, yeah, Excel does that, you need to fiddle with these options and hope the options do not get turned off, seeing as companies may randomly screw over user preferences". The look in their eyes...they probably had done a whole bunch of data entry before they even noticed the corruption. Anyways, a few decades later those genomes got renamed, for some reason or another. Other customers came to me and pleaded, please do not install Word 6, it's bad, and I was like, well, be that as it may, but Microsoft has broken the file format, again, so if someone sends you a Word 6 document you will not be able to read it. They've got you over the barrel, perhaps consider not using their software? Unless you like being chained to that main-mast, of course, don't shame the kink! Later on a coworker said, try Visio, and I was like, this is sort of bad, and they were like, yeah, it was better before Microsoft bought it. So, when was Microsoft not producing kusogeware? Sometime during the semi-mythical 80s, perhaps?
Copilot is useful, particularly if it is the only thing enabled in your company.
Don't get me started on Azure though. Their VMs are insanely slow, yet still cost like hundreds per month.
I don't know who in their right mind thinks it is a good deal and that they should move all their services into Azure. Apparently a lot of senior management.
MS has been successful despite fucking up the monolithic position they held in desktop and gaming, because they managed to find a particularly valuable golden goose. It's just that in doing so they allowed the other golden geese they have to become quite sick.
If you took out cloud rev MS would have been much more motivated to not let the rest of the company's products turn in to the sorry state they're in.
They are, as always, using Windows to sell all their other crap, especially Azure and 365. Things like their AD or office tools are tightly integrated into the cloud so you realistically can't even use the one without using the other.
It was low enough where I think most buyers questioned if it would be worth it to have the license just incase.
That's a bit silly.
Some people think pineapple doesn't belong on pizza, but that means you should avoid buying pineapple pizza, not outlaw it.
Awesome: great business opportunity to open new pizza places.
Either you make a lot of money from customers, or you sell to Google for more money. If the latter: open yet another place, rinse and repeat.
Look, I love making a analogies. Just that they have scale, and competing against it is hard.
It's the website that spamming that.
Either via google.accounts.id.prompt(), or options provided to loaded Google scripts.
Google is guilty only insofar as that feature is possible.
I’m sure the real goal of this “feature” is to get people to sign-up for the site without them actually realizing they are signing up. They click OK just so the modal goes away and now the site has their email address. They can use that growing email list to seek higher prices from sponsors when they put an add in their newsletter the user will now be spammed with.
Imagine if the other auth providers followed suit. Open a news article and you need to close the Google auth, Apple auth, Facebook auth, Microsoft auth, GutHub auth, X auth… I’m sure I’m forgetting some. After closing those 6 modals, reject the cookie prompt, close the newsletter modal, and maybe now we can start reading the article if there is an auto-playing video ad covering some of the content.
All of this is really pushing me away from the internet in general and souring me on the tech industry as a whole. I’m at that point where I find myself casually browsing for jobs that won’t require I ever touch a computer again.
Websites that choose to put a sign-in with Google button on a page can disable the popup by setting data-auto_prompt="false". The default being "true" is how Google is pushing this, but this seems like a rather gentle way of pushing.
It's clearly a deliberate choice that websites make. Your explanation as to why they're doing it seems very plausible to me.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FedCM_API
But ultimately websites can pop up whatever annoying nonsense they want. There isn't really any "way forward" except avoiding bad websites or using ad blockers.
Google and all of Big Tech well know of our objections but unfortunately we are only hardly perceptible noise to be ignored on their way to even greater profits.
I don’t see the sheet for imgur.com either because, well, they’ve blocked access completely for UK users. :shrug:
EDIT: also just tested turning this checkbox off. I then clicked a link in an email, got the pop-up, unchecked “ask me every time”, clicked default browser, and didn’t see the pop-up next time.
Apple dark UX pattern is that there always has badges on Settings app if you do not subscribe to iCloud even if you have manual backup. You cannot dismiss it.
"What is Arcade, am I supposed to be paying for it?"
Sigh. Apple used to be better than this.
I’ve seen it with non-Google apps too. I’m not sure what causes it, but I believe sometimes you can long tap the link and select the correct option.
I believe the behavior where you say no and it still tries to open the app is because the default behavior on Google Maps links is to open Google Maps.
Sparrow made Gmail a great experience, but Google bought it and shut it down. I’m still rather bitter about that. It’s the only email client that actually made me enjoy email.
You can use mobile Thunderbird with a Gmail account.
Not that hard. Get new email, autoforward old email to new. In old email, set reply-to as new email.
After suitable time has elapsed, disable old email.
It would require systematically changing my email at the 300+ sites I’m aware of, assuming they allow that, or deleting the account if they allow that. I’ve been making efforts here and it’s painful. Many companies don’t have good systems for that, if any at all. Even big companies like Amazon and Sony, I was told to just abandon old accounts and let them hang out there forever… I had duplicate Audible and PlayStation accounts. No way to delete them. I found this particularly upsetting with Sony, considering how many times they’ve been hacked. On some sites I also ended up in captcha purgatory.
Then there are the hundreds more who have my email somewhere. I tied to change my email 13 years ago. My own mother still sends to my old gmail account. I think she used the new one a few times, but do I really want to nag my 70 year old mother about using the wrong address? My dad is the only one who reliably uses it, because he uses his contacts app properly. Over a decade and the progress has been almost non-existent. All this effort did was make email and logins harder to manage by spreading it out.
The pragmatic approach is to go back to Gmail, since most stuff is still there. I don’t want to be in bed with Google, but at least it’s only one thing to think about.
Thinking about it, my Gmail account is also my Apple ID. I think Apple only recently made an option available to change that, but it feels risky.
My main Amazon account has all the Audible stuff I actually care about, as well as copies of the stuff on my legacy account, so I wouldn’t lose anything that mattered if they deleted it.
My goal was to delete the legacy account and all my personal data related to it (which I believe is required by law in some places).
I ended up on the phone with support and talked to them for quite a while. They said there was nothing that could be done. This was probably a year ago, Best I could do I guess is delete as much as I can, if they allow it, change the email to a 10 minute email, and then let it go. This is what I had to do for Papa John’s last week and a couple other places, but I’d rather my account actually be deleted so I don’t have to worry about a future data breach on an account I would no longer be able to get into. I don’t know how their database is setup, if I change something I can see, is it actually gone or does the DB keep a history? There are a lot of unknowns that make me uncomfortable with just abandoning an account.
With Sony it was worse. At least Amazon talked to me. Similar situation with 2 accounts. Their website said to call to have your account deleted. I called, waited on hold for 40 minutes, then was told they couldn’t do it. They hung up on me while I was trying to tell them their website said to call the number.
This past weekend I migrated out of 1Password, which I had been using for 18 years. That was a fairly big job. The export/import did OK, but I still had to go one-by-one through 600+ entires to sure things up and fix little things. The main job is done, but I have a little more I’d like to do. The email job is bigger and has lots of other people involved, which is where the real challenge is, as they’re all different.
Don't start using new services or capabilities on corporate platforms. It's a trap (TM).
Start with open source. It'll be a little bit behind the curve initially, but it will pay off over a lifetime. I started with Keepass back in the day, and never had to worry about migration.
As much as I’d like to be an open source purist, the user experience isn’t there. The lack of design talent in the open source community is still apparent, and there is often little focus on the last 5-10% of the UX that makes something nice to use. I assume this is because that part isn’t very fun.
Yes, this can seem overwhelming. That's where the auto-forward helps. This is what I did: initially changed emails at the big ones - banks, govt, etc., maybe 10 or so. For the rest, when an email would come in, I would change it for just that one. It distributes the workload over time and is much more manageable.
> I tied to change my email 13 years ago. My own mother still sends to my old gmail account
This is where the reply-to setting becomes important - most email clients will use the reply-to when responding. For persistent ones, go into, say Mom's contacts, and update the email there, deleting the old one. Had to do this with my parents and family. Don't make them do it, do it yourself.
How to set reply-to: go to Settings > Accounts and Import, click "edit info" next to your email address in the "Send mail as" section, select "Specify a different 'reply-to' address" in the pop-up and enter the desired email.
I am almost sure that you only use 15 of those sites regularly, 30 of those sites occasionally, and almost never for the other 250.
It's doable. If you keep finding excuses, you'll never get it done.
I still have those accounts and occasionally check for emails from old contacts or service emails, but on a daily basis I don't interact with Gmail at all.
Maybe all those apps have since updated to natively support all Gmail’s features, but that is also a cat and mouse game with all the stuff they try that doesn’t fit neatly into established mail protocols.
I think that's actually true. But what does it mean, what's the way forward?
I'm probably out of the loop, but last I checked, to put an app somewhere that's not the official App Store, they required you to pay their hefty fee for putting it in the App Store (even if you weren't going to do that), _and_ an additional Core Technology Fee.
(And if that's still accurate, one thing I don't get is how that isn't also anti-competitive.)
Apple didn't lie about supporting a user's freedom to run anything they like, only to execute a rug pull after they successfully drove the other open options out of the marketplace.
They did execute a rugpull, and they aren't offering safety anymore.
The rug pull is ads in the app store. If I go to the app store now and search for my bank's name, the first result is a different bank. If I search for 'anki', the first 3 results are spam ad-ware tracking-cookie trash.
If I search "password store" I get 4 results before the "password store" app. I had a family member try to install one of the google-docs suite of apps, and the first result was some spamware that opened a full-screen ad, which on click resulted in a phishing site.
My family can't safely use the app store anymore because they click the first result, and the first result for most searches is now adware infested crap because of apple's "sponsored results".
What's the point of charging huge overhead on the hardware, and then an astounding 30% tax, and also a $100/year developer fee, if you then double-dip and screw over the users who want your app by selling user's clicks to the highest bidder?
At the same time Apple keeps telling their users some fairy-tales about "privacy".
No, Apple isn't honest. Definitely not.
Because they sell "insights" or "access" or "marketing" or whatever.
This is a red herring. Is Google a hypocrite for lying about it first? Sure. But suppose Android dies and gets replaced by something that never claimed to be open. Or gets replaced by nothing so there is only iOS. Is that fine then?
Of course not, because the problem is the lack of alternatives, and having your choice glued to an entire ecosystem full of other choices so that everything is all or nothing and the choices you would make the other way are coerced by them all being tied together into something with a network effect.
repeating marketing speak.
Apple got you.
Walled Prison. Look at all those people suffering with iMessage trying to use openclaw.
Honestly, it might finally result in me fully exiting the Google ecosystem.
Same here. If I must be in a walled garden, then I will choose the better kept garden and it sure as hell isn't one of Google's crappy platforms.
The only reason to put up with the shittiness of Android is freedom. The same freedom they keep eroding with their constant, never ending attempts to force remote attestation and sideloading limits.
GrapheneOS is the last hope for Android as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully Google won't find ways to screw that up.
> it might finally result in me fully exiting the Google ecosystem
Don't wait for them to push you away. Start exiting now. Setting up mail on my own domain and distancing myself from gmail is one of the best things I've ever done. Highly recommended.
* The date has now gone missing from my lockscreen, only showing the time.
* I can no longer see signal strength on my phone for mobile, if wiki is off. I turn wifi on, and now I can. I use a larger font, but it used to be just fine.
There are all sorts of little changes like this I've noticed recently.
It makes me wonder if Google is slowly mangling default ASOP so projects like GrapheneOS will have a crappier daily build experience.
And GrapheneOS doesn't have time to manage features changes like this, they focus on their key security improvements and fixes. If Google is doing this on purpose, it has real potential to seriously degrade ASOP as usable without lots of fixes and changes.
They already rug-pulled security updates or whatever it was a few months back.
And it really seems like the sort of sneaky, underhanded way Google would handle things.
Google stopped publishing any info about security updates until (I think) quarterlies come out. GrapheneOS had to sign some sort of non-disclosure for them, in order to roll them into updates.
If you don't have that on, then you're not fully up to date with security updates. This could be the difference.
So doesn't this mean GrapheneOS is effectively controlled by Google now?
Also, how is keeping anything secret under NDA possible at all if you want to know what's in a security update and be actually able to build that update yourself from source?
That said. it is indeed annoying, and there was a lot of uproar when it happened.
For the nuance of it, I'd suggest GrapheneOS docs, you'll get more accurate info.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/27068-grapheneos-security-p...
I swapped out my MBP for an Asus Pro Art running linux last year and that's been working out pretty well. Hopefully my cheap motorola phone will be supported by GrapheneOS soon and that will work out too.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47241551
Note that this needs to be a Pixel at the moment.
People sometimes act as if the one would be an viable alternative to the other. Even both are effectively the exact same shit for the exact same reasons.
How about we move instead to open systems?
EDIT: Edited the above which previously said 90 days incorrectly. Not sure where my brain pulled that from but I posted the correct details here prior: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45743615
Notably if you install a month before your subscription expires you need to reinstall the app in 1 month.
It increases to 365 days, no? At least thats the longest I can sign my app and I use a personal but paid Apple Developer Account
But it's only 365 days if you install the app on day 1 of your $99 subscription period.
[1] https://docs.sidestore.io/docs/faq#what-is-sidestore
I think they later made a Black Mirror episode along these lines. "Resume viewing... Resume viewing..."
Metalhead is also among my favorites. Those kill bots put Skynet to shame.
I'm fine with an opt-in lock-down feature so people can do it for their parents/grandparents/children.
Also, just let people get used to it. People will get burned, then tell their friends and they will then know not to simply follow what a stranger guides them to do over the phone. Maybe they will actually have second thoughts about what personal data they enter on their phone and when and where and who it may be sent to.
Same as with emails telling you to buy gift cards at the gas station. Should the clerk tell people to come back tomorrow if they want to buy a gift card, just in case they are being "guided" by a Nigerian prince scammer?
> I'm fine with an opt-in lock-down feature
Me too, but it's really just some UI semantics whether this is 'opt-in' or 'opt-out'. Essentially it would be an option to set up the phone in "developer mode".
With billions of Android users, there's only millions of people who need or really want this. So like 1%. My point is stop thinking about your mom's windows box and consider the scale.
I have had to actually verify my “investment profile” with a major broker in order to unfreeze some trades, in a high friction process. To the extent that a sideloaded app that looks exactly like the bank app has a low friction install, then people can get fooled and irrevocably lose savings.
If the lock-down is opt-in, almost nobody will opt in to it. If the lockdown is opt-out, then whether scams still happen depends on how much friction there is in opting out.
Freedom to install other unsigned sandboxed apps has a solution: Banks could use passkeys and other non-phishable methods. Sideloaded apps in Android can’t get to the bank app’s passkey.
Passkeys or hardware tokens get worries about the enshittification of the theoretical recovery process. Which, if that’s the case, I guess we should hope for/pay a better world, at least with banks and brokers. For them specifically, for account recovery allow either showing up in person or using ID checks.
Both for personal accounts and business accounts (i.e. with Business Email Compromise), I believe the onus should be on the bank to use non-phishable methods to show the human-readable payee from their app for irrevocable transfers.
Yes, sad, but works.
People will learn about scams, but scammers are unfortunately a few steps ahead. (Lots of scammers, good techniques spread faster among them than among the general public.)
Also Chrome trusts like 300 CAs. Does that work? Probably not if you live in 200 of those countries.
I don't know how I feel about this change but context does in fact matter about whether something is a good idea or not
In physical world, there’s only so many people who can rob you if you do something stupid (like constantly give away copies of your keys to strangers), they will be very noticeable when they are doing so, and if you feel like something’s off you can always change the lock.
On the Internet, an you are fair game to anyone and everyone in the entire world (where in some jurisdictions even if it’s known precisely who is the figurative robber they wouldn’t face any consequences), you could get pwned as a result of an undirected mass attack, and if you do get pwned you get pwned invisibly and persistently.
Some might say in these circumstances the management company installing a (figurative) biometric lock is warranted, and the most reliable way to stop unsuspecting residents from figuratively giving access to random masked strangers (in exchange for often very minor promised convenience) is to require money to change hands. Of course, that is predicated on that figurative management company 1) constantly upping their defences against tenacious, well-funded adversaries across the globe and 2) themselves being careful about their roster of approved trusted parties, whom they make it easy to grant access to your premises to.
Meanwhile installing software on your own device is the thing that isn't that. They're preventing it even when you're the owner of the device and have physical access to it. They're not installing a lock so that only you can get in, they're locking you out of your own building so they can install a toll booth on the door.
All these changes are attacks on general purpose computing and computing sovereignty and personal control over one's data, and one's digital agency.
Yeah I'm aware that we can only watch from the sidelines. At least we can write these comments.
The new world will be constant AI surveillance of all your biosignals, age and ID verification, only approved and audited computation, all data and messaging in ID attached non e2e encrypted cloud storage and so on. And people will say it keeps you safe and you have nothing to fear if you are a law abiding person.
For an example think about how mods are treated on cars. There can be very good reasons for those restrictions, but if your goal is to be able to modify phones in the way you want, that might not be the best way to go about it.
In short, be careful what you wish for because sometimes you get it. :)
"Nils Bejerot, a Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist, invented the term after the Stockholm police asked him for assistance with analyzing the victims' reactions to the robbery and their status as hostages. Bejerot never met, spoke to, or corresponded with the hostages, during or after the incident, yet diagnosed them with a condition he invented."
"According to accounts by Kristin Enmark, one of the hostages, the authorities were careless, and their initial approach to the robbers nearly compromised the hostages' safety.[6] Enmark criticized Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme, for endangering their lives. Palme believed that if Olsson saw one of his close relatives, he might be willing to surrender the hostages; however, the police made a careless mistake. They misidentified Olsson, and sent a 16-year old boy who was unrelated into the bank. This caused confusion and resulted in Olsson firing rounds at the boy who barely escaped. Olsson became much more agitated in general. After that, Enmark and the other three hostages were fearful that they were just as likely to be killed by police incompetence as by the robbers.[7][8][9] Ultimately, Enmark explained she was more afraid of the police, whose attitude seemed to be a much larger, direct threat to her life than the robbers.[10]"
Essential means to get fucking lost and let me do with the hardware I paid for whatever I want.
I paid for my phone.
These are general purpose computing devices. It's sure taking a long time, but Cory Doctorow's talk on the war on general purpose computing is sure starting to become a depressing reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
I'm not the only one who has noticed: https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/s/6y39VNaLUh
Even if you are a bank or whatever, you shouldn't store global secrets on the app itself, obfuscated or not. And once you have good engineering practices to not store global secrets (user specific secrets is ok), then there is no reason why the source code couldn't be public.
It's not a coincidence that Linux distros are much less susceptible to malware in their official repositories. It's a result of the system. Trusted software currated and reviewed by maintainers.
The play store will always have significant amounts of malware, so this entire conversation is moot.
1. "Most open source repositories do have eyes on the code"
Seems basically impossible that this is true.
"Debian often has separate maintainers who maintain patches specific to Debian." does not support the previous statement. Debian cherry picks patches, yes.
2. "It's not a coincidence that Linux distros are much less susceptible to malware in their official repositories."
Not only is it not a coincidence, it seems to not even be true.
3. "The play store will always have significant amounts of malware, so this entire conversation is moot."
This seems to just be "a problem can not be totally solved, therefor making progress on this problem is pointless to attempt". I... just reject this?
Locking down computing is just fundamentally wrong and leads to an unfree society.
Tongue-in-cheek example, just to get the point across: instead of calling it Developer Mode, call it "Scam mode (dangerous)". Require pressing a button that says "Someone might be scamming me right now." Then require the user to type (not paste) in a long sentence like "STOP! DO NOT CONTINUE IF SOMEONE IS TELLING YOU TO DO THIS! THIS IS A SCAM!"... you get the idea. Maybe ask them to type in some Linux command with special symbols to find the contents of some file with a random name. Then require a reboot for good measure and maybe require typing in another bit of text like "If a stranger told me to do this, it's a scam." Basically, make it as ridiculous and obnoxious as possible so that the message gets across loud and clear to anybody who doesn't know what they're doing.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it proves too much, which really gets to the heart of the issue.
If people are willing to be led to the slaughterhouse in a blindfold then it's not just installing third party code which is a problem. You can't allow them to use the official bank app on an approved device to transfer money because a scammer could convince them to do it (and then string them along until the dispute window is closed). You can't allow them to read their own email or SMS or they'll give the scammer the code. If the user is willing to follow malicious instructions then the attacker doesn't need the device to be running malicious code. Those users can't be saved by the thing that purportedly exists only to save them.
Whereas if you can expect them to think for two seconds before doing something, what's wrong with letting them make their own choices about what to install?
This isn't actually that obvious, for a number of reasons.
The first is that it causes there to be more sheep. If you add friction to running your own software then fewer people start learning about it to begin with. Cynical cliches about the government wanting a stupid population aside, as a matter of policy that's bad. You don't want a default that erodes the inherent defenses of people to being victimized and forces them to rely on a corporate bureaucracy that doesn't always work. And it's not just bad because it makes people easier to scam. You don't want to be eroding your industrial base of nerds. They tend to be pretty important if you ever want anything new to be invented, or have to fight a war, or even just want to continue building bridges that don't fall down and planes that don't fall out of the sky.
Another major one is that it's massively anti-competitive. If the incumbents get a veto, guess what they're going to veto. This is, of course, the thing the incumbents are using the scams as an excuse to do on purpose. But destroying competition is also bad, even for sheep. Nobody benefits from an oligopoly except the incumbents.
And it's not just competition between platforms. Think about how "scratch that itch" apps get created: Some nerd writes the app and it has only one feature and is full of bugs, but they post it on the internet for other people to try. If trying it is easy, other people do, and then they get bug reports, other people contribute code, etc. Eventually it gets good enough that everyone, including the sheep, will want to use it, and by that point it might even be in the big app store. But if trying it is hard when it's still a pile of bugs and the original author isn't sure anybody else even wants to use it, then nobody else tries it and it never gets developed to the point that ordinary people can use it.
So maybe the scam we should most be worried about here is the one where scams are used as an excuse to justify making it hard for people to try new apps and competing app stores, and deal with the other scams in a different way. Like putting the people who commit fraud in prison.
No. This assumption is the core fault with the entire line of reasoning. The typical sheep will not do arbitrary things for a stranger such as sending you his entire bank account because you told him he needed to pay an IRS penalty in crypto to avoid being picked up by the state police who are already en route in 15 minutes.
It's a continuum. The question is how much of the low end needs to be protected by the system.
Binning into discreet blocks to match your example, the question is where to place the dividers between the three categories - nerd, sheep, and incompetent. We don't care to accommodate the third.
In theory I have no problem with the idea of hanging the incompetents out to dry, when I imagine them as unsympathetic idiots, the same people who litter, and can’t drive correctly. But actually I think most of us would be horrified when it turns out that category of incompetents includes our parents and grandparents, or, increasingly, our children (Gen Z has been increasingly falling victim to scams, partly because they have no idea how computers work since modern ones present only highly abstract surfaces to them, and I suspect Alpha will be the same).
Maybe 10-20%, generously. The people who are falling for it under current protections clearly are not reading anything they're looking at or thinking about security at all, they've fallen for social engineering scams and sincerely believe they're at imminent risk of being arrested by the FBI or that their adult child is about to be killed. They're in fight or flight mode already, not critical thinking and careful deliberation mode.
If you were to rank everyone by gullibility, these people would largely be clustered in the top 1-2% of most gullible people. There is very little you can do to protect these people, realistically.
That actually sounds like an argument is favor of this restriction. If someone is in a position of deep trust with the scammer then waiting a day is nothing. But if they're in a panic, not thinking things through or calling anyone for advice, that state probably won't last 24 hours.
What I would challenge you to consider is this: where do we draw the "good enough" line, where we finally stop sacrificing freedom over the devices we purchased under terms that originally included freedom, control, and ownership at the altar of protecting the vulnerable?
Do scam victims need to be 0.1% of all Android users? 0.01%? 0.0001%? Should this extend to computers too - should local admin become completely unavailable to all Windows users? Should root become unavailable to all Mac users? To all Linux users? Should you be allowed to own technology at all, or merely rent it as a managed service, to protect those who cannot be trusted to own devices without getting scammed?
> What I would challenge you to consider is this: where do we draw the "good enough" line, where we finally stop sacrificing freedom over the devices we purchased under terms that originally included freedom, control, and ownership at the altar of protecting the vulnerable?
There's nothing to challenge here. The method I proposed keeps you fully in control and owning your device. Anybody can follow that process if they want. It's not like I said each person has to get approval from Google before enabling developer mode on their phone.
> Do scam victims need to be 0.1% of all Android users? 0.01%? 0.0001%?
This is not some kind of paradox like you're making it out to be. A very reasonable starting point would be "get this scam rate down to match {that of another less-common scam}". Iterate until/unless new data comes along suggesting otherwise.
> Should this extend to computers too - should local admin become completely unavailable to all Windows users? Should root become unavailable to all Mac users? To all Linux users?
"Too"?! Where did I ever suggest root should be "completely unavailable" to all Android users?
> Should you be allowed to own technology at all, or merely rent it as a managed service, to protect those who cannot be trusted to own devices without getting scammed?
Where did I suggest any of this?
There are just as many scam apps in play store and this system does nothing to help with those.
You can’t feasibly protect someone that believes the person on the phone is their family member or the chief of police.
This kind of thing has to be verified like how they try drugs. Just randomly doing things will surely be useless, similar to how randomly optimizing parts of a program is generally worthless.
Why destroy the ecosystem that gives you the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot?
Turning Android into another walled garden removes user choice from the equation.
I think a big warning in red "Warning :If you don't personally know the person asking you to install this app, you are getting scammed. No legitimate business or Institution will ask you to install this app"
Done.
I'd wipe the Play Store off the face of the earth. Have you looked at the garbage on there that Google considers legit?
This: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47447600
is is the shit people are exposed to when they go through the Play Store. You don't find that on F-droid.
The second thing I'd do to combat scammers is the same thing I'd do to combat child porn and disinformation: educate people. This silly process is a technical answer to a social problem, and those rarely work well.
Pretending that this is about anything but Google's greed is giving them far too much credit.
...which clearly companies don't want, because complacent mindless idiots are easier to brainwash, control, and milk.
https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
Oh, turns out they just let you pretend to be the real company to sell your scam app.
What a load of good that "Approval" process does.
Furthermore, this verification system also functions as a US sanction mechanism—one that can be triggered against any entity the US decides to ban.
Then Google can do whatever they want with their OS and I can do what I need with mine. You might actually get phone OS competition. This is what the walled garden is actually meant to prevent.
How did they manage to survive as the grandma-account-draining brand for over 15 years, though? They're still the market leader.
One of the best arguing tactics the pro-control side has come up with is "The way it works right now is JUST not good enough". And then you don't need to argue any further or substantiate that. You just force your opponent into coming up with new measures because obviously right now we have an emergency that must be dealt with immediately. So far, this reasoning has worked for program install restrictions, de-anonymizing internet users, all sorts of other random attestation and verification measures, and it will be used for so much more.
My question to all that is - what has happened NOW that changed the situation from how it was just a couple years back?. Google hasn't been sitting idle for all these years, they've been adding measures to Android to detect malicious software and prevent app installs by clueless users - measures that were striking a balance between safety and freedom. Why is everything safety-related in the last few years suddenly an emergency that must be rectified by our corporate overlords immediately and in the most radical ways? How did we even survive the 2010s if people are less secure and more prone to being scammed with the new restrictions right now than they were back then?
I'm not saying there's not an issue, but without hard stats, these issues will always be magnified by companies as much as possible as the wedge to put in measures that benefit them in ways other than the good-natured safeguarding of the consumer. In an open society, there's always a point where you balance the ability to act freely with ensuring that the worst actors can't prosper in the environment. Only one of these things is bad, but you can't have both. You need a middle ground.
15 years ago ransomware effectively didn't exist and virtually nobody's grandparents did their banking on their phones.
So, 2020 or 2023 or so. Plenty of ransomware, plenty of phone banking. What changed since then?
They're an amoral monopolistic megacorp that should have been broken up a year ago.
They are performing the ritual of maximalist offensive position -> half-hearted walk back to a worse status quo.
Is the problem they claim to want to solve real? Maybe. I haven't seen a convincing breakdown that doesn't lump a lot of unrelated fraud in the unvetted APK bucket.
That's beside the point though. No one should applaud this utterly predictable and disgusting behavior.
I don't accept it when Unity does it. I don't accept it when Hasbro does it. I won't accept it here either.
What a ridiculous strawman. I outlined a specific issue with what they introduced. To make it even more clear - the new flow Google created would work just the same with just the 24 hour delay, but the way how they introduced the "For how long should you be able to install apps?" question comes out of left field and suddenly makes you think about timing. Why would they ask you that? After all, you jumped through a sufficient number of hoops for Google, they probably estimated that anyone who has gone that far out of their way should know what they're doing. So why ask a developer or power user about the duration when this feature works? The very unsubtle hint here is that the question is asked because soon enough, 'Forever' will not be an option anymore. It's a very common tactic - restrictions start light, and then are ratcheted up into a nagging reminder that works to dissuade everyone but the most dedicated.
> You understand there's a real goal being pursued here, right? Suppose Google is dealing in good faith.
I do. But why are you so implicitly adamant that the only goals here are good, noble, moral goals? Google will do everything in its interests, regardless of how good or bad it is for people. Decreasing the vectors of attack on their platform is profitable for them, and it also coincides with the public interest of not getting hacked. But ensuring that other brands, OEMs or developers can't interfere with them building an app distribution monopoly is also good for them. Being the sole arbiters of what goes on the devices that have now become mandatory for participating in society is extremely good for them. Do you think they're only pursuing the first one of the three?
> How should they solve it differently?
You're not going to like the answer, but there's no clean, perfect solution that balances everyone's interests. Companies are pushing the safety angle in pursuit of the three interests I listed above. You can see just how much it ramped up in the last few years, even though we've been living under this status quo for decades. But it's not as simple as turning devices into grandma-phones with approved functionality only, because both extremes have big drawbacks. If you have 90s-style insecure fully-privileged computing for everyone, that's a path towards extremely unsafe and vulnerable systems, worked on by people who don't know what they're doing. If you have full lock-down, you're awarding current market leaders with an endless reign of power by insulating them from competition and giving them more control over users. The way we were doing things before this crackdown was striking a good balance of keeping most grandmas out while not choking the abilities of the hobbyists or third-party app distributors too much. If you want an alternative, an ADB flag that you have to change once through a command prompt would've been good too.