Does anyone here actually support Google’s Developer Verification?
I don’t. I’ve put a warning about it in my repo because I’m against policies like sideloading restrictions, forced ID verification.
Curious what other devs here think. Is Play Store still worth the hassle?
Yes I am.
I spend a long time of my career in IT Sec.
80% of android users will freely install whatever APK from wherever.
Info stealer infected fake apps are a massive risk to a huge part of the user base.
Yes, it will get a little bit more complicated to sideload. But nobody is prevented from it.
And everybody that is against user protection (and yes, this is fucking user protection, just not for you) is invited next Christmas to de-worm the android devices of my family without wiping them.
EDIT for all those that only read the memes. Sideloading will NOT be disabled. You have to jump though extra hoops.
Yes, the way they do this is not even testable yet and we can argue over details.
I support the principal idea, as someone who had to live with the fallout of people who installed “it support apps” because someone told them to
Most scam apps are in the Google Play Store btw
maybe because it was to easy to upload to the googleplay store. Maybe there should be some kind of verification of the person uploading. How could this be accomplished?
Joking aside I don’t think side loading should be encoumbered like this, but for the official app store it makes sense.
If their IA was so great, they would use it to curate the mess that is their app store…
IA?
Spoken like a true Microsoft and Google agent.
Because I think we should protect people that are not tech savvy. I am open for a debate
Your heart is in the right place, but your mind is not.
Google et.al. is pushing for IDV in every segment due to lobby pressure from meta to build REAL user database for advertisement purposes in the age of LLM drivel. Every “protect the *” has meta’s government lobbyists behind it.
There could be alternative approaches, but meta’s goals just so happens to align well with a fascist government’s that thinks they need to stamp out dissenting voices and anonymity.
Total control and taking away freedom is not negotiable. Not literally, but: “Maybe we should ban programming languages on Windows and Linux too, because it could be used to program viruses. We should protect the not so tech savvy.” See what I mean? Instead we should look forward to a better way of helping them. The proposed way of Google is not acceptable.
A ridiculous and absurd lie. 90% have zero clue what one is, let alone go into the developer settings (there are one, maybe two settings you have to enable) to change the settings to even make that possible. Why are you lying about this? It’s weird.
I am lying? OK, so is:
I have over 2 decades of background in hardcore IT-Sec, i know my stuff. And you? What is your qualification, where are your sources?
I wonder if a statement like this ever once convinced anyone of anything. My guess would be it nearly always has the opposite effect. You basically told me that whatever I know doesn’t matter because “trust me bro”. For all I know, you’re the worst source ever for literally every topic. Your articles didn’t back you up. Why do people bother with shit like this? “I’m an expert so what I say goes” is idiotic and in no way addresses the common sense point I was making: the average person definitely doesn’t know or install apks because of fucking course they don’t. If you said 80% would if scammed, that’s at least plausible but I’m not even sure I could believe that. The well is poisoned now in any case so you’re not convincing anyone here after this… Whatever masturbatory shit this was. Or just shilling for a corporation? Who the fuck knows
That is why I linked sources. I don’t say trust me bro.
You do, actually.
This translates to anyone who isn’t you to:
And again if you’re going to make this 80% claim and then say you sourced it, don’t link shit that’s sort of related but in no way backing up that claim. No one here is saying malware isn’t a problem. You’re getting downvoted for making specific claims which are absurd.
That is a general issue of online debates.
I can not squash 20 years of daily learning into a comment.
I can point you to sources where you can verify it our self. Social engineering studies, blog post about campaigns from other researchers.
Placing m credentials there is my kind of saying “I have insight, ask”, but how do you think should something like this communicated.
We have a highly sensitive topic, with a lot of obsolete or just misinformation.
It is a highly complex topic that can not be simply understood by most persons, but social media opens a place for debate anyways.
There are many other examples for this happening and it is bad. Very bad.
Another example Google wants to get rid of third party cookies. Instead they want to to adspace action on your local system. In our browser, protected. But bad, because Google. Firefox could implement the same API on better, but no, bad because Google.
Google is not the good guy. But just throwing out every fucking Idea because Google Had it (or was forced into it, allowing sideloading again was because of pressure) is just not what we need
This is so much beating around the bush. Somehow you’ve managed to ignore the 15 times I’ve pointed it out: most users do not install apks. That’s all. You claimed they did and I said that was dumb. So anything else is just a distraction from the point I was trying to make. Google is pretty shitty but you might have a point that not everything they do is shitty… But that’s not what the conversation started as. And I don’t really care to change the subject at this point.
How do you now that?
Again, the ability to install a completely unverified APK is used in real, successful, attacks.
The user DOES NOT KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING! That is the entire point!
If users would know what this is and understand, maybe it would be less if a risk.