Open Letter to Google on Mandatory Developer Registration for App Distribution(keepandroidopen.org) |
Open Letter to Google on Mandatory Developer Registration for App Distribution(keepandroidopen.org) |
Scammers will use stolen identities or shell companies. They already do this on the Play Store itself. The $25 fee and passport upload haven't prevented the flood of scam apps there.
Meanwhile F-Droid's model (build from source, scan for trackers/malware) actually provides stronger guarantees about what the app does. No identity check needed because the code speaks for itself.
The permission-based approach someone mentioned above makes way more sense. If your app wants to read SMS or intercept notifications, sure, require extra scrutiny. But a simple calculator app or a notes tool? That's just adding friction for no security benefit.
No permission system can work as well as a proper solution (such as banks and governments getting their shit together and investing in basic digital skills for their citizens).
Let's consider that Google's Android was and is a huge improvement in security in terms of OS design (even if inspired by iOS) over the previous incumbent (let's call Windows that). That difference in security still exists today (probably due to Window's Backwards Compatibility prioritization, and its later positioning in the market as a cheap powertool (cheap compared to iOS, powertool compared to android).
That security advantage, by the way, was not just the result of initial design, but it required a lot of maintenance, in the form of the 'Play Store' App Store equivalent (at no cost to the user no less).
All this to say that let's consider this context, and consider what alternatives are proposed.
1- The windows 'install whatever you want model' (Now with OS approved certificates): As mentioned, worse, with almost no sandboxing. 2- Linux package managers + install whatever you want: Valid model for powerusers and programmers, not really relevant for massive personal computing. 3- Keeping the old Android system: This would imply simply ignoring the problem of growing professional and untouchable malicious actors that seem to be growing in power with the advent of anonymous financial tech. Is this the actual proposal? Do nothing about the problem? Pretend there is no problem? I don't think the problem is necessarily malware, but to take a specific example, suppose a Casino from Isle of Man is allowing underaged and users from jurisdictions where it is illegal. Regardless of whether you think this is ok, or debatable or it depends on the circumstances. Isn't the ask to identify the developer rather trivial? Just a little bit of paperwork, you want to be a developer? Install code that someone else will use? Put your name in it, have skin in the game.
I think there's also a contradiction between the need for developer privacy and user privacy. Most HN users are privacy-sensitive. Well I propose there's a tradeoff between the privacy of the consumer and the producer. In order to provide privacy and rights to the user, the producer needs to come forward. There's no way to have the cake and eat it too, if both producer and consumer are shy, they will never find each other, if both producer and consumer stay anonymous, they won't trust each other, if both producer and consumer stay anonymous, they don't give any guarantees to the other party that they won't go rogue.
You know this if you've tried to start a business, you can either put your face, your name, register with the state, put your actual address. Or you can use an anonymous brand, a Registered Agent Address, etc... The latter is a harder sell than the former, and you only don't notice it if you are completely absorbed in your own world and cannot put yourself in the shoes of your customer.
tl;dr: Google has an impeccable data security track record. And User/Developer privacy is a tradeoff. Google is right to protect user privacy and not developer privacy.
I have an APK I would like you to install on your personal phones. No, I won't tell you who I am.
Please let me know when you are comfortable with this.
If you want to make the decision to install Hay Day, the user should be able to know that it is the Hay Day from Supercell or from Sketchy McMalwareson.
99.9% of apps should have no issue with their name being associated with their work. If you genuinely need to use an anonymously published app, you will still be able to do that as a user.
I'm pretty sure the goal of Google's changes is to make it so you can't
In Google's announcement in Nov 2025, they articulated a pretty clear attack vector. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...
> For example, a common attack we track in Southeast Asia illustrates this threat clearly. A scammer calls a victim claiming their bank account is compromised and uses fear and urgency to direct them to sideload a "verification app" to secure their funds, often coaching them to ignore standard security warnings. Once installed, this app — actually malware — intercepts the victim's notifications. When the user logs into their real banking app, the malware captures their two-factor authentication codes, giving the scammer everything they need to drain the account.
> While we have advanced safeguards and protections to detect and take down bad apps, without verification, bad actors can spin up new harmful apps instantly. It becomes an endless game of whack-a-mole. Verification changes the math by forcing them to use a real identity to distribute malware, making attacks significantly harder and more costly to scale.
I agree that mandatory developer registration feels too heavy handed, but I think the community needs a better response to this problem than "nuh uh, everything's fine as it is."
A related approach might be mandatory developer registration for certain extremely sensitive permissions, like intercepting notifications/SMSes...? Or requiring an expensive "extended validation" certificate for developers who choose not to register...?
Why would the community give a different response? Everything is fine as it is. Life is not safe, nor can it be made safe without taking away freedom. That is a fundamental truth of the world. At some point you need to treat people as adults, which includes letting them make very bad decisions if they insist on doing so.
Someone being gullible and willing to do things that a scammer tells them to do over the phone is not an "attack vector". It is people making a bad decision with their freedom. And that is not sufficient reason to disallow installing applications on the devices they own, any more than it would be acceptable for a bank to tell an alcoholic "we aren't going to let you withdraw your money because we know you're just spending it at the liquor store".
these people aren't gullible. they are ignorant (in the uneducated sense). they are not making bad decisions. they are not even aware that there is a decision to be made.
and worst of all, this problem affects the majority of those populations. if more than half of our population was alcoholic then we absolutely would restrict the access to alcohol through whatever means possible.
it's a pandemic. and we all know what restrictions that required.
Taking a step back though, I suspect there are cultural differences in approach here. Growing up in Europe, the idea of a regulation to make everyone safer is perfectly acceptable to me, whereas I get the impression that many folks who grew up in the US would feel differently. That's fine! But we also have to recognise these differences and recognise that the platforms in question here are global platforms with global impact and reach.
But for regular people, that is not really the world they want. If the bank app wrongly shows they’re paying a legitimate payee, such as the bank, themselves or the tax authority, people politically want the bank to reimburse.
Then the question becomes not if the user trusts the phone’s software, but if the bank trusts the software on the user’s phone. Should the bank not be able to trust the environment that can approve transfers, then the bank would be in the right to no longer offer such transfers.
The world does not consist of all rational actors, and this opens the door to all kinds of exploitation. The attacks today are very sophisticated, and I don't trust my 80-yr old dad to be able to detect them, nor many of my non-tech-savvy friends.
> any more than it would be acceptable for a bank to tell an alcoholic "we aren't going to let you withdraw your money because we know you're just spending it at the liquor store".
This is a false equivalence.
Education is also not that effective. Spreading warnings about scams is hard and warnings don't reach many people for a whole laundry list of reasons.
The status quo is decidedly not fine. Society must act to protect those that can't protect themselves. The only remaining question is the how.
Google has an approach that would work, but at a high cost. Is there an alternative change that has the same effects on scammers, but with fewer issues for other scenarios?
And it seems Google thinks society is beginning to unravel in SEA due to scammers. Trust breaks down, people stop using phones to do important things, GDP can shrink, banks go back to cheques, trees will be cut down!!
It's bad to let people go and catch the zombie virus and the come back and spread it, right?
...
I don't like it, but the obvious decision is to set up a parallel authority that can issue certificates to developers (for side loading), so we don't have to trust Google. Let the developer community manage this. And if we can't then Google can revoke the intermediary CA. And of course Google and other manufacturers could sell development devices that are unlocked, etc.
So... no food and safety regulations, because life is not safe, and people should have the freedom to poison food with cheaper, lethal ingredients because their freedom matters more?
You're right that things can't be made more safe without taking away the freedom to harm people. Which is why even the most freedom-loving countries on earth strike a balance. They actually have tons and tons of safety regulations that save tons and tons of lives, even you from your point of view that means not "treating people as adults". You have to wear a seatbelt, even if you feel like you're not being treated like an adult. Because it's also not just your own life you're putting at risk, but your passengers' as well.
You're taking the most extreme libertarian stance possible. Thank goodness that's an extremely minority view, and that the vast, vast majority of voters do actually think safety is important.
It signals that you don't care much about security, and that you don't care about non-technical users, and don't even have the capacity to see how they view a system.
Sure, you can analyze domain names effectively, you can distinguish between an organic post and an ad, you know the difference between Read and Write permissions to system files, etc...
But can you put yourself on the shoes of a user that doesn't? If not, you are rightfully not in a position as a steward of such users, and Google is.
Then we will see how you will react.
That's right, it's your decision to use Android. If you choose to do so, that's on you.
For example, the "Restricted Settings"¹ feature (introduced in Android 13 and expanded in Android 14) addresses the specific scam technique of coaching someone over the phone to allow the installation of a downloaded APK. "Enhanced Confirmation Mode"², introduced in Android 15, adds furthers protection against potentially malicious apps modifying system settings. These were all designed and rolled out with specified threat models in mind, and all evidence points to them working fairly well.
For Google to suddenly abandon these iterative security improvements and unilaterally decide to lock-down Android wholesale is a jarring disconnect from their work to date. Malware has always been with us, and always will be: both inside the Play Store and outside it. Google has presented no evidence to indicate that something has suddenly changed to justify this extreme measure. That's what we mean by "Existing Measures Are Sufficient".
[^1]: https://support.google.com/android/answer/12623953
[^2]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/prebuilts/fullsdk/...
- From Dec 2024 there's https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/2915570/state-g... and https://theinvestor.vn/thai-govt-collaborates-with-google-to... which list some efforts done in “collaboration between the Digital Economy and Society (DES) Ministry [of Thailand] and Google”. It mentions “The initiative started in April, providing the Google Play Protect feature”, which “blocked attempts by criminals to install apps more than 4.8 million times on more than 1 million Android devices”. And https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/business/tech/40036973 is from earlier (Apr 2024), about the introduction of the Google Play Protect feature.
- From April 2025 there's https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/around-the-gl... a blog post from a “VP, Government Affairs & Public Policy”, which mentions “people in Asia Pacific feel it acutely, having lost an estimated $688 billion in 2024” (I think this may be across all scams?) and ends with “Combatting evolving online fraud in Asia-Pacific is critical” after listing a bunch of random things (unrelated to Android) Google is/was doing. This suggests to me that Google was under some criticism/pressure from governments for enabling scams, and eager to say “see, we're doing something”.
- The developer verification announcement came four months later in August 2025: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-...
> In early discussions about this initiative, we've been encouraged by the supportive initial feedback we've received. In Brazil, the Brazilian Federation of Banks (FEBRABAN) sees it as a “significant advancement in protecting users and encouraging accountability.” This support extends to governments as well, with Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs praising it for providing a “balanced approach” that protects users while keeping Android open. Similarly, Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society sees it as a “positive and proactive measure” that aligns with their national digital safety policies.
This shows that it was a negotiation with the governments/agencies in Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand that were breathing down on Google to do something.
- The fourth country where this developer verification is rolling out first is Singapore, and https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/android-malware-sc... is from Sep 2023 while https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/google-android-dev... is from Feb 2024 which mentions that a certain upgrade to Google Play Protect (blocking apps if they “demands suspicious permissions such as access to restricted data like SMSes and phone notifications”) was first rolling out in Singapore.
- And the most recent https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de... from November 2025 (which promised the “students and hobbyists” account type and the “experienced users” flow “in the coming months”) also has a “Why verification is important” section that mentions the “consistently acted to keep our ecosystem safe” and “common attack we track in Southeast Asia” and “While we have advanced safeguards and protections to detect and take down bad apps, without verification, bad actors can spin up new harmful apps instantly”.
The overall picture I get is less of “Google to suddenly abandon these iterative security improvements” but more like: under pressure from governments to stop scams, Google has been doing various things like the things you mentioned, and scammers have also been evolving and finding new ways to carry out scams at scale (like “impersonating developers”), and the latest upcoming change requiring developer verification on “certified Android devices” is simply the next step of the iteration. It sucks and feels like a wholesale lock-down, yes, but it does not seem a jarring disconnect from the previous steps in the progression of locking things down.
"Existing measures are working," perhaps?
What is this evidence? Please share it.
In the section "Existing Measures Are Sufficient." your letter also mentions
> Developer signing certificates that establish software provenance
without any explanation of how that would be the case. With the current system, yes, every app has to be signed. But that's it. There's no certificate chain required, no CA-checks are performed and self-signed certificates are accepted without issue. How is that supposed to establish any form of provenance?
If you really think there is a better solution to this, I would suggest you propose some viable alternative. So far all I've heard for the opponents of this change is, either "everything is fine" or "this is not the way", while conveniently ignoring the fact that there is an actual problem that needs a solution.
That said, I do generally agree, with you that mandatory verification for *all* apps would be overkill. But that is not what Google has announced in their latest blog posts. Yes, the flow to disable verification and the exemptions for hobbyists and students are just vague promises for now. But the public timeline (https://developer.android.com/developer-verification#timelin...) states developer verification will be generally available in March 2026. Why publish this letter now and not wait a few weeks so we can see what Google actually is planning before getting everybody outraged about it?
The problem lies in (technical) literacy, to some extent people's natural tendency to trust what others are telling them, the incompetence of investigative powers, and the unwillingness of certain countries to shut down scam farms and human trafficking.
My bank's app refuses to operate when I'm on the phone. It also refuses to operate when anything is remotely controlling the phone. There's nothing a banking app can do against vulnerable phones rooted by malware (other than force to operate when phones are too vulnerable according to whatever threshold you decide on so there's nothing to root) but I feel like the countries where banks and police are putting the blame on Google are taking the easy way out.
Scammers will find a way around these restrictions in days and everyone else is left worse off.
When a scammer pretending to be your bank tells you to install an app for verification and it says "This app was created by John Smith" even grandma will get suspicious and ask why it doesn't show the bank's name.
Well, in that case, Google has an easy escalation path that they already use for Google Business Listings: They send you a physical card, in the mail, with a code, to the address listed. If this turns out to be a real problem at scale, the patch is barely an inconvenience.
In contrast, convincing someone to read an OTP over the phone is a one-time manual bypass. To use your logic..
A insalled app - Like a hidden camera in a room.
Social engineering over phone - Like convincing someone to leave the door unlocked once.
The sideloading warning is much much milder, something like "are you sure you want to install this?".
Passkeys are also an active area to defeat phishing as long as the device is not compromised. To the extent there is attestation, passkeys also create very critical posts about locking down devices.
Given what I see in scams, I think too much is put on the user as it is. The anti-phishing training and such try to blame somebody downward in the hierarchy instead of fixing the systems. For example, spear-phishing scams of home down payments or business accounts work through banks in the US not tying account numbers to payee identity. The real issue is that the US payment system is utterly backward without confirmation of payee (I.e. giving the human readable actual name of recipient account in the banking app). For wire transfers or ACH Credit in the US, commercial customers are basically expected to play detective to make sure new account numbers are legit.
As I understand it, sideloading apps can overcome that payee legal name display in other countries. So the question for both sideloading and passkeys is if we want banks liable for correctly showing the actual payee for such transfers. To the extent they are liable, they will need to trust the app’s environment and the passkey.
Because I hope you realize that clamping down on “sideloading” (read: installing unsigned software) on PCs is the next logical step. TPMs are already present on a large chunk of consumer PCs - they just need to be used.
They are saying that claiming the underlying problem is not real or not big enough to need addressing is an ineffective way to argue.
You can go a softer route of requiring some complicated mechanism of "unlocking" your phone before you can install unverified apps - but by definition that mechanism needs to be more complicated then even a guided (by a scammer) normal non-technical user can manage. So you've essentially made it impossible for normies to install non-playstore apps and thus also made all other app stores irrelevant for the most part.
The scamming issue is real, but the proposed solutions seem worse then the disease, at least to me.
This is also true if they can only install verified apps, because no company on earth has the resources to have an actually functional verification process and stuff gets through every day.
If you can be convinced by this, you can be convinced by anything. What if the scammer uses "fear and urgency" to make the person log onto their bank account and transfer the funds to the scammer?
If you can convince people to install new apps through "fear and urgency," especially with how annoying it often is to do outside of the blessed google-owned flow (and they're free to make it more annoying without taking this step), that person can be convinced of anything.
> I agree that mandatory developer registration feels too heavy handed, but I think the community needs a better response to this problem than "nuh uh, everything's fine as it is."
There's no other "solution" other than control by an authority that you totally trust if your "threat" is that a user will be able to install arbitrary apps.
The manufacturer, service provider, and google, of course, won't be held to any standard or regulations; they just get trusted because they own your device and its OS and you're already getting covertly screwed and surveilled by them. Google is a scammer constantly trying to exfiltrate information from my phone and my life in order to make money. The funny thing is that they are only pretending to defend me from their competition - they're not threatened by those small-timers - they're actually "defending" me from apps that I can use to replace their own backdoors. Their threat is that they might not know my location at all times, or all of my contacts, or be able to tax anyone who wants access to me.
Alternatively reading notifications could be opt in per app, so the reading app needs to have permission to read your SMS message app notifications, or your bank notifications, that would not be as full proof as that requires some tech literacy to understand.
You can also cut yourself with a kitchen knife but nobody proposes banning kitchen knives. Google and the state are not your nannies.
oh nice, i love this game.
you cant carry a kitchen knife that is too long, you cant carry your kitchen knife into a school, you cant brandish your kitchen knife at police, you cant let a small child run around with a kitchen knife...
literally most of what "the state" does is be a "nanny"
(not agreeing or disagreeing with google here, i have no horse in this particular race. but this little knife quip is silly when you think about it for more than 5 seconds)
This reeks of "think of the children^Wscammed". I mean, following this principle the only solution is to completely remove any form of sideloading and have just one single Google approved store because security.
> A related approach might be mandatory developer registration for certain extremely sensitive permissions, like intercepting notifications/SMSes...? O
It doesn't work like that. What they mean with "mandatory developer registration" is what Google already does if you want to start as a developer in Play Store. Pay 25$ one-time fee with a credit card and upload your passport copy to some (3rd-party?) ID verification service. [1] In contrast with F-Droid where you just need a GitLab user to open a merge request in the fdroid-data repository and submit your app, which they scan for malware and compile from source in their build server.
[1] but I guess there are plenty of ways to fool Google anyway even with that, if you are a real scammer.
OK, so instead of educating stupid (or overly naive) people, we implement "protections" to limit any and all people to do useful things with their devices? And as a "side effect" force them to use "our" app store only? Something doesn't smell that good here …
How about a less drastic measure, like imposing a serious delay for "side loading" … let's say I'd to tell my phone that I want to install F-Droid and then would have to wait for some hours before the installation is possible? While using the device as usual, of course.
The count down could be combined with optional tutorials to teach people to contact their bank by phone meanwhile. Or whatever small printed tips might appear suitable.
Right now when I search for "ChatGPT", the top app is a counterfeit app with a fake logo, is it really this store which is supposed to help us fight scams?
Just did Play search for "ChatGPT" and the top-2 results were for OpenAI's app (one result was sponsored by OpenAI one result was from Google's search). So anecdotally your results may vary.
Permissions are a great way to distinguish.
Or would you be OK knowing that Thunderbird you downloaded from https://thunderbird.net/ is signed by the thunderbird.net certificate owner?
Aren't we supposed to have sandboxing to prevent this kind of thing? If the malware relies on exploiting n-days on unpatched OSes, they could bypass the sideloading restrictions too.
On the Play store there is a bunch of annoying checking for apps that request READ_SMS to prevent this very thing. Off Play such defense is impossible.
Just like they went after Samsung for adding friction to the sideload workflow to warn people against scams.
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/30/epic-games-sues-samsung...
Google listened.
Blame the judge for one of the worst legal calls in recent history. Google is a monopoly and Apple is not. Simple fix for Google...
Same comment I made a few days ago, I feel it bears repeating as much as possible until it's really driven home how detrimental and uninformed that decision was.
It would not be unsurprising for a government to tell Google they must block any VPN apps from being installed on devices, and Google using the developer requirements to carry out the ban.
Don't they already have that power?
This conflates identity verification with criminal deterrence, they're not the same thing.
I don't know if this trade off is worth it, but the idea that it won't affect this abuse at all is false.
The appeals to people in Southeast Asia being scammed reminds me of a blog by Cory Doctorow last year: Every complex ecosystem has parasites [1]
The gist of it is that technology can be useful, but that usefulness comes with a price: sometimes bad actors are going to commit fraud or other undesirable actions.
As an example, you can reduce the amount of banking app scams to 0% by simply denying any banking apps on phones. But because of banking apps' usefulness we're not going to do that, so there will be some non-zero risk that you will get scammed.
As a technical user I chose Android for its usefulness, accepting that there may be a (minute) chance that I get scammed, but it is a risk I am willing to take, and Google will unilaterally take this choice away from me.
Still, I don't believe Google's security concerns are sincere, so I think I just wasted my time typing all of this
> Disproportionate impact on marginalized communities and controversial but legal applications
applies more to the elderly in third-world countries who are constantly scammed through fraudulent side-loaded apps than it does to hackers who want to install whatever software they want but do not want to use a non-Google AOSP distribution.
The most telling detail is the sequencing. Google spent years in court arguing Android is open to fend off antitrust regulators, won key battles on that basis, and is now quietly closing the door they swore under oath was permanently propped open. The antitrust defense was the product roadmap's cover story. And framing this as security is particularly rich from the company whose own Play Store routinely hosts malware that passes their review. The problem they're solving isn't "unverified developers distribute harmful apps" — it's "unverified developers distribute apps we can't monetize or control."
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
> Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified. [0]
> Advanced users will be able to"Install without verifying," but expect a high-friction flow designed to help users understand the risks. [1]
Firstly - I am yet to see "ongoing conversations with the community" from Google. Either before this blog post or in the substantial time since this blog post. "The community" has no insight into whether any such "advanced flow" is fit for purpose.
Secondly - I as an experienced engineer may be able to work around a "high-friction flow". But I am not fighting this fight for me, I am fighting it for the billions of humans for whom smart phones are an integral part of their daily lives. They deserve the right to be able to install software using free, open, transparent app stores that don't require signing up with Google/Samsung/Amazon for the privilege of: Installing software on a device they own.
One example of a "high friction flow" which I would find unacceptable if implemented for app installation on Android is the way in which browsers treat invalid SSL certificates. If I as a web developer setup a valid cert, and then the client receives an invalid cert, this means that the browser (which is - typically - working on behalf of the customer) is unable to guarantee that it is talking to the right server. This is a specific and real threat model which the browser addresses by showing [2]:
* "Your connection is not private"
* "Attackers might be trying to steal your information (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards)"
* "Advanced" button (not "Back to safety")
* "Proceed (unsafe)" link
* "Not secure" shown in address bar forever
In this threat model, the web dev asked the browser to ensure communication is encrypted, and it is encrypted with their private key. The browser cannot confirm this to be the case, so there is a risk that a MITM attack is taking place.
This is proportionate to the threat, and very "high friction". I don't know of many non-tech people who will click through these warnings.
When the developer uses HSTS, it is even more "high friction". The user is presented all the warnings above, but no advanced button. Instead, on Chromium based browsers they need to type "thisisunsafe" - not into a text box, just randomly type it while viewing the page. On Firefox, there is no recourse. I know of very few software engineers who know how to bypass HSTS certificate issues when presented with them, e.g. in a non-prod environment with corporate certs where they still want to bypass it to test something.
If these "high friction" flows were applied to certified Android devices each time a user wanted to install an app from F-Droid - it would kill F-Droid and similar projects for almost all non-tech users. All users, not just tech users, deserve the right to install software on their smart phone without having to sign up for an "app store" experience that games your attention and tries to get you to install scammy attention seeking games that harvest your personal information and flood you with advertisements
Hence, I don't want to tell people "Just install [insert non-certified AOSP based project here]". I want Android to remain a viable alternative for billions of people.
[0] - https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...
[1] - https://x.com/matt_w_forsythe/status/2012293577854930948
Concretely, my original plan was to provide an .apk for manual installation first and tackle all this app store madness later. I already have enough on my plate dealing with macOS, Windows, and Linux distribution. With the change, delaying this is no longer viable, so Android is not only one among five platforms with their own requirements, signing, uploading, rules, reviews, and what not, it is one more platform I need to deal with right from the start because users expect software to be multiplatform nowadays.
Quite frankly, it appears to me as if dealing with app stores and arbitrary and ever changing corporate requirements takes away more time than developing the actual software, to the detriment of the end users.
It's sad to watch the decline of personal computing.
The result is unwarranted trust from users in stores that are full of scams.
Apple and Google effectively built malware pipelines under the guise of security.
One thing, we the people can do, is pressure our politicians to break up Google along with the rest of big tech.
There are many primary challengers this cycle that are running anti-monopoly platforms. Help their cause, signing pointless petitions is just West Wing style fantasy that is extremely childish.
Google will not change their minds, they're too busy buying goodwill from governments by playing along. There aren't any real alternatives to Android that are less closed off and they know it.
In the time it took you to read this comment, 200 phones were sold.
Do BOTH, when possible.
It feels like independent development on devices has slowed in recent years. More stores appealing to different developer models/tools and monetization strategies please.
Also, I’m going to coin a new term for the recurring names that I see promoting this kind of thing here: “safety fascists.” Safety fascists won’t sleep until there is a camera watching every home, a government bug in every phone, a 24/7 minder for every citizen. For your safety, of course.
I think I may hate safety fascists more than I hate garden variety fascists. That’s an accomplishment!
2) I hope the lockdowns don’t strangle tethering. My other consideration is to use whatever phone for calls, texts, and “secure” apps. The rest I’ll do on an unrestricted device that just uses the phone as a data connection. More crap to carry, but crap that does what I want and need and not what “they” insist upon.
P.S. And that may mean spending less on future phones. Especially if I also switch my higher quality camera image needs to a real camera. Sigh, yet more physical crap, but I’m pissed enough to do it, and then each individual device would be less of a feature compromise than what a phone provides — other than size and portability, which are indeed quite significant.
Only immutable devices should be allowed as second factor.
I think my overriding concern is not nuking F-Droid. I actually think that's a great solution and, interestingly, F-Droid apps already don't use significant permissions (or often use any permissions!) so that might work. Also it would be good if perhaps F-Droid itself could earn a trusted distributor status if there's a way to do that.
Or a marriage of the two, F-Droid can jump through some hoops to be a trusted distributor of apps that don't use certain critical permissions.
I think there have to be ways of creatively addressing the issue that don't involve nuking a non-evil app distribution option.
"I am responsible for my own actions" mode.
You click that, the phone switches into a separate user space. Securenet is disabled, which is what most financial apps rely on.
Then you can install all the fun stuff you want.
This is really a matter of Google not sandboxing stuff right. Why the hell does App A need access to data or notifications from App B.
Advertising networks. Just like how you see crap like a metronome app have a laundry list of permissions that it doesn’t need. Some cases they are just scammy data harvesters, but in other cases it’s the ad networks that are actually demanding those permissions.
Google won’t sandbox properly because it’s against their direct business interest for them to do so. Google’s Android is adware, and that is the fundamental problem.
The community does not need to do that. Installing software on my device should not require identification to be uploaded to a third party beforehand.
We're getting into dystopian levels of compliance here because grandma and grandpa are incapable of detecting a scam. I sympathize, not everyone is in their peak mental state at all times, but this seems like a problem for the bank to solve, not Android.
People choosing between the smartphone ecosystems already have a choice between the safety of a walled garden and the freedom to do anything you like, including shooting yourself in the foot.
You don't spend a decade driving other "user freedom" focused ecosystems out of the marketplace, only to yank those supposed freedoms away from the userbase that intentionally chose freedom over safety.
So yes, "its fine the way it is" _is_ valid; but the meaning it "we're at a good point in the balance, any more cost is too much given the gains it generates"
People fearful about being scammed should buy a phone with a hardware lock to prevent it from ever accepting sideloads--no option to go to dev mode, ever. You could even charge more for the extra security.
People who want the freedom to sideload can choose to buy a phone without the extra hardware security feature.
Manually installing an app might be close to the limit of what grandma can be coached through by an impatient scammer.
Multiple steps over adb, challenges that can't be copy and pasted in a script, etc. It can be done but it won't provide as much control over end user devices.
There is a point at which people have to think critically about what they are doing. We, as a society, should do our best to protect the vulnerable (elderly, mentally disabled, etc) but we must draw the line somewhere.
It’s the same thing in the outside world too - otherwise we could make compelling arguments about removing the right to drive cars, for example, due to all the traffic accidents (instead we add measures like seatbelts as a compromise, knowing it will never totally solve the issue).
Yes, one could imagine some kind of mental test and if you fail you don't get to use your bank online, you have to walk to the physical location to make transactions. But this can obviously be abused to shut out people from banking based on political and other aspects. Generally democracies are wary of declaring too broad sets of people as incapable of acting independently without some guardian. Obviously beyond a certain threshold of mental incapacitation, dementia etc. it kicks in, but just imagine declaring that you're too easy to influence and scam and we can't let you handle your money,... But somehow we can rely on you using sane judgment when voting in elections. Or should we strip election rights too?
We rely on polite fictions around the abilities of the average person. The contradictions sometimes surface but there is no simple way to resolve it without revising some assumptions.
All phone calls, SMS, emails, and instant messages should be blocked unless the other party is in my contacts or I have reached out to them first (plus opt-in contact from contacts of contacts, etc). Ideally, cryptographically verified.
I would argue this is the real solution to spam and scamming - why on earth are random people allowed to contact me without my consent? Phone numbers or email addresses being all you need to contact me should be an artifact of an earlier time, just like treating social security numbers as secret.
I realize this isn't super practical to transition existing systems to (though spam warnings on email and calls helps, I suppose, and maybe it could be made opt-in). I dearly hope the next major form of communication works this way, and we eventually leave behind the old methods.
Also, SMS shouldn't be used for 2FA anyway.
What do we replace it with? Haha, idk man. How about water? More difficult to hoard in ridiculous quantities, better spend it before it evaporates, and it occasionally falls from the sky (UBI). That's what I call a liquid asset!
You'll always find individual cases where people do extremely dumb stuff, but using that as a justification is also dumb. If you want to significantly curtail that freedoms of a large group, it's on you to come up with a good evaluation of tradeoffs, so
> the community needs a better response to this problem than "nuh uh, everything's fine as it is."
They already have, but you choose to use a fake simplification as a representative
Make the warning a full screen overlay with a button to call local police then.
(Seriously)
"but local police won't treat that seriously..." "the victim will be coached to ignore even that..." well no shit then you have a bigger problem which isn't for google to fix.
Things that everyone relies on for life are generally regulated by law. Telecom platforms for instance. I’d say the mandatory software platform I need for my bank, drivers license, daily communication, etc should be in this bucket.
The EU declaring both Apple and Google gateway platforms is a much better approach. Congress is abdicating its responsibility to craft the legal frameworks for equal access in the modern age.
The US government is by design supposed to be as minimal as possible, and the laws affecting you kept as local as possible. We're not supposed to have a "the government" that's the same as EU governments. "The federal government should make laws" should be an absolute last resort. When you say "congress is abdicating its responsibility", I'd like you to point to where in the constitution it says that congress has such responsibilities.
This! I was about to reply that you have already posted this comment four days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092480
Apple was deemed not to be anticompetitive in app stores because there was no existing market of app stores on iOS. Google was more open in allowing other app stores, but deemed anticompetitive by discouraging their use relative to the Play store.
The irony is the more open player was deemed more anticompetitive. OP is saying Google is “fixing” their anticompetitive behavior by eliminating alternative app stores entirely.
However, there is a relevant court case here. The one about Samsung's "Auto Blocker" (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/samsung-and-epic-gam...). Epic Games sued because Samsung made it too hard to install apps from "untrusted" sources. This may be a reason why Google is now trying to make the process more difficult on the developer side instead.
I'm kind of hoping Qualcomm's open sourcing work will also affect the ability to run mainline Linux on Android devices, but it's looking like a Linux OS that covers the bare basics seems to be a decade away.
I'm sorry but people that think this way tend to also think having money is some morality signal and not one of a massive personality defect (greed).
Linux based phones are starting to become viable as daily drivers. [0] They are even coming with VM Android in case an application is needed that does not have a Linux equivalent.
I am interested in how Google's gatekeeper tactics are going to affect Android like platforms such as /e/os and GrapheneOS. [1]
This trick only works if the general public is aware of what the app developer label does, what it is used for, what it protects against, and what it's supposed to say. However, if that's the case, you already have all the info you need to deduce that you shouldn't be installing APKs sent by a guy over the phone anyway.
So maybe before talking about anything about direct installs, they could fix the big scams on the Play Store.
I've mostly owned Android devices but for my family I've always recommended iOS devices because they are more locked down.
How can you judge if Google's plan is a good one? Add up the harms caused by the new rules and weigh that against the reduction in harm and see where the balance is?
I have a hard time believing the net outcome for the overall Android community would be negative.
Many Android phones still do not have a separate secure element.
Also, the Play Store itself regularly contains malware.
In the end it is mostly about control, dressed up as protecting users. If it was about security, Google would support GrapheneOS remote attestation for Google Pay (for being the most secure Android variant) and cut off many existing phones with deplorable security.
In other news, a new study shows that cutting off your feet is 100% effective against athlete's foot.
the Samsung case is very interesting, haven't bumped into that one before.
... as far as I understand the really nasty part of "contemporary" jurisprudence of antitrust enforcement is that the standard is to show that things would be cheaper for the consumers
(though I don't know why developers are not considered consumers of the app marketplace services, after all for them bringing their own payments and whatnot would be much more cost effective... well, anyway, unfortunately the courts are mostly locked to this very inefficient path-dependent way of regulating anything through super expensive arguments, which is an obvious (?) dysfunction of legislation)
I am actually pitching an alternative though that doesn't seem that out there to me. I'm honestly surprised it isn't already an option in mainstream messengers (or at least Signal).
I think practically you'd want to be able to create time-limited, otherwise uncorrelated invite tokens/addresses that you could freely give out and deactivate later.
And I'm being extremely generous here, because this won't erradicate malware. It will make a specific subset of malware harder to distribute. I imagine most malware is distributed through the play store, and naturally that will be unaffected.
The next step is simply that the scammer modifies the official bank app, adds a backdoor to it, and convinces the victim to install that app and login with it. No hardware-bound credentials are going to help you with that, the only fix is attestation, which brings you back to the aformentioned issue of blessed apps.
A fundamental difference with e.g. FIDO2 (especially hardware-backed) is that the private credentials are keyed to the relying party ID, so it's not possible for a phising site to intercept the challenge-response.
> Please enter the code we sent you in the app.
lol, lmao even
Would it make sense to then argue that enforcing TPM-backed measured boot and binary signature verification is a legitimate way to address the problem?
Are we saying that, because scamming exists and we haven’t proposed an alternative, it means that clamping down on software installation methods is a legitimate solution to the problem?
This is true, but if this goes through, I imagine that the next step for safety fascists will be to require developer licensing and insurance like general contractors have. And after that, expensive audits, etc, until independent developers are shut out completely.
Why do drug companies deserve justice for developing and pushing heroin-analogues, but not tech companies?
Our work has real consequences.
The exceptions for students/hobbyist were always promised, but the "advanced flow" came later based on this feedback. AFAICT Google has, so far, only made things better after the initial announcement. I don't see why we shouldn't give them the benefit of doubt, at least until we have some specifics.
Pushing this open letter out just days/weeks before Google promised the next major update just seems off.
The permissions approach isn't bad. I may trust Thunderbird for some things, but permission to read SMS and notifications is permission to bypass SMS 2FA for every other account using that phone number. It deserves a special gate that's very hard for a scammer to pass. The exact nature of the gate can be reasonably debated.
It's therefore on their choice of search engine, or choice of app store, to lead them from "thunderbird" to "The app downloadable from https://thunderbird.net/", which can then be validated as signed by the verified owner of the same domain.
I'm not proposing changing the permissions system.
If you search any web search engine for "thunderbird", https://thunderbird.net/ is the top result. You can choose your preferred search engine, you should be able to choose your own app store, and your level of confidence stems from your own estimation of that entity's past competence.
If you do search Google Play for "thunderbird", you'll find it lists an app with internal name "net.thunderbird.android" as the top result (along with lots of other mail clients). What I'm proposing is that if your choice of search engine or app store shows you https://thunderbird.net/ as the place to download Thunderbird, and you do, PKI can then verify that the app was independently signed by the owner of the matching domain, and that the certificate was issued to them by a CA who regularly validates they control that domain.
Meanwhile my parents are getting hammered by inescapable malvertisements from Google, a TTS voice ordering them to install a "cleaner" app or have their phone die, no matter how many you report or what knobs you touch under ad personalization. Facebook knew 20% of their yearly revenue was scams and intentionally deferred moderator action to keep that business. All this "trust" is so overwhelming, the only way to make our computing more trusted is if OEM auto-installed the malware themselves. Oh wait, Samsung does that!
> No luck needed. Linux based phones are starting to become viable as daily drivers.
Then please tell me, which non-Android Linux-based phone can I buy here in Brazil (one of the first places where Android would have these new restrictions)? I'd love to know (not sarcasm, I'm being sincere). Keep in mind that only phones with ANATEL certification can be imported, non-certified phones will be stopped by customs and sent back.
I do not know all International laws. Nor do I respect countries and politicians that force such restrictive laws that prevent reuse of good devices that are now unsupported by the original manufacture.
Secondly if that law was enacted in the US ... I would buy a product that has a known bug to allow for loading a custom OS. In court I would push for jury-nullification too.
Authoritative governments suck at all fronts ... not just phone restrictions.
Would you mind pointing me to the ANATEL certification process? I am wondering if the voice of the law is worded to prevent competition ... sounds like something Google would of helped push through.
Are you allowed old school non-smart phones? That is how I would do it. Laptop and dumb phone.
If they make FOSS illegal, guess I’ll be a criminal. Come and take it.
> So... no food and safety regulations, because life is not safe, and people should have the freedom to poison food with cheaper, lethal ingredients because their freedom matters more?
This is harm to others and is very obviously something we should enforce. There are unreasonable laws about food (banning the sale of raw milk cheese for example, which most of the world enjoys with perfect safety), but by and large they are unobjectionable.
> You're right that things can't be made more safe without taking away the freedom to harm people. Which is why even the most freedom-loving countries on earth strike a balance.
I never said I was opposed to striking a balance. Of course we can strike a balance. Indeed we already have when it comes to installing apps on Android. But these measures are being advanced as if safety were the only consideration, which it isn't.
> You're taking the most extreme libertarian stance possible.
No, that is what you have projected onto me. That's not actually what my stance is.
> Life is not safe, nor can it be made safe without taking away freedom. That is a fundamental truth of the world... Someone being gullible and willing to do things that a scammer tells them to do over the phone is not an "attack vector". It is people making a bad decision with their freedom.
That sounds pretty black and white extreme to me, when you talk about things like "life is not safe" and a "fundamental truth". I don't see any appreciation of balance there.
Maybe it's not what you meant to write, but your comment continues to absolutely come across as extremist and anti-balance to me. It seems like I was mischaracterizing what you actually believe (now that you've elaborated), but I don't think I mischaracterized what you wrote.
Food and seatbelts, that's literal health and life-and-death; very immediate and visible.
"Cybersecurity" rarely is; and even when it is, the problem is that the centralized established authorities (like google) aren't at all provably good at this.
This is about like the geeks who hate the idea of ad supported services and think that everyone should just pay for every service they use.
FWIW: I do exclusively buy Apple devices, pay for streaming services ad free tier, the Stratechery podcast bundle, ATP and the Downstream podcasts and Slate. I also pay for ChatGPT and refuse to use any ad supported app or game.
If random malware the user chose to install does that, then that is not the bank's fault. The bank is no more involved than anybody else. And no, I don't think "regular people" want to make that the bank's fault.
For securities, if I own stock outright, the company has to indemnify if they do a transfer for somebody else or if I lack legal capacity. So transfer agents require Medallion Signature Guarantees from a bank or broker. MSGs thereby require a lengthy banking relationship and probably showing up in person.
For broker to broker transfers, there is ACATS. The receiving broker is in fact liable in a strict, no-fault way.
As far as I know, these liabilities are never waived. Basically for the sizable transfers, there is relatively little faith in the user’s computers (including phones). To the extent there is faith, it has total liability on some capitalized party for fraud.
These defaults are probably unknown for most people, even those with large amounts of securities. The system is expected to work since it has been set up this way.
Clearly a large number of programmers have a bent to go the complete opposite direction from MSGs, where everything is private keys or caveat emptor no matter the technical sophistication of the customer. I, well, disagree with that sentiment. The regime where it’s possible for no capitalized entity to be liable for wrongful transfers (defined as when the customer believes they are transferring to a different human-readable payee than actually receiving funds) should not be the default.
But that is expensive, so my impression is that for non-sizeable transfers, and beyond banking, for basically anything dealing with lots of regular people doing regular-people-sized operations, the default in the industry is to try and outsource as much liability onto end-users. So instead of treating user's computers as untrusted and make system secure on the back end, the trend is to treat them as trusted, and then deal with increased risk by a) legal means that make end-users liable in practice (keeping users uninformed about their rights helps), and b) technical means that make end-user devices less untrusted.
b) is how we end up with developer registries and remote attestation. And the sad thing is, it scales well - if device and OS vendors cooperate (like they do today), they can enable "endpoint security" for everyone who seeks to externalize liability.
Perhaps programmers have a clear idea of what's given up when you do things your way.
I'm not sure you do.
This is more or less how people expect things to work today ....
The money mule themselves is almost certainly insolvent to pay the damages. Currencies can also change by the money mule (either to a different fiat currency or crypto), putting the ultimate link completely out of reach of the originating country.
If intermediary banks are deputized and become liable in a no-fault sense, then legitimate transfers out become very difficult. How does a bank prove a negative for where the funds come from? De-banking has already been a problem for a process-based AML regime.
Are banks POWERFUL? Do they have lots of money and/or connections to those who do? Do they have a vested interest in getting transactions right?
Absolutely!
Now, with all that money and power -- they -- whoever THEY are, need to come up with smart ways to verify transactions that don't involve me giving them all the keys to all my devices.
We have protections like this elsewhere - even when they have some "ownership." The bank kinda owns my house, but they still can't come in whenever they want.
I grew up and live in Europe. I support the general idea of "regulation to make everyone safer" being an acceptable choice. At the same time, I vehemently oppose third-party interests reaching into my computing device and dictating what I can vs. cannot do with it.
But as you say, "global platforms with global impact and reach" - and so I can't set up my phone to conditionally read out text and voice messages aloud, because somewhere on the other side of the world, someone might get scammed into installing malware, therefore let's lock everything down and add remote attestation on top.
Unfortunately, the problem is political, not technological, and this here is but one facet of it. Ultimately, what SaaS does is give away all leverage: as users, it doesn't matter if we fully own the endpoints, or have a user-friendly vendor: any SaaS can ultimately decide not to serve a client that doesn't give the service a user-proof beachhead.
And it's also not actual regulation, just new TOS from a company many are basically forced to interact with.
I've heard much criticism of it being too heavy-handed, but I don't think I understand criticism that it won't improve security. Could you expand on that?
Education isn't really working at this global scale. It doesn't reach people the way you seem to belive it does. Many, if not most people are generally disinterested in learning new things and this gets amplified when it involves technology.
Nope. We could, for example, ask developers to register with their legal identity to release apps.
Simple example: I have a foss VPN app running on my phone to avoid censorship and surveillance in some countries I visit. While using this app is no problem, non-anonymous development might carry consequences to the developer in some dictatorship jurisdictions (which are plenty of). I'm not sure all devs of such system would be willing to give their ids.
Another example is that this way US can cut out countries and people they don't like from mobile usage (which basically equals to modern social life). Look into sanctioned judges of international court because US protects war criminals.
Play store can be fast and verification based and the F/OSS stores can be slower, reputation and review based.
...
But fundamentally the easiest thing is to ask people to pay to unlock the phone's security barriers, this makes it harder and costlier for scammers.
Now they'll need to pay off a local mailman to give them all of Google's letters with an address in an area they control so they can register a town's worth of addresses, big whoop. It'll cost them a bit more than the registration fee, but I doubt it'll be enough to solve the problem.
Yeah, this is a huge amount more work than, like, nothing.
People are already effectively faking addresses for something as stupid as Amazon reviews. Apparently it's that cheap to fake an address, because those crapware spam stores that rotate their name/products/listings aren't exactly the size of the mob.
What this will probably do is raise the bar for scams a little so that dumb "mom-and-pop" criminals can no longer get started with a guide and a software kit they buy on Telegram, clearing the field for "professionals" while at the same time making identity fraud, address fraud, and (money) mules more lucrative.
All of that to shift away the blame from banks, public institutions, education, and to some extent people's personal financial responsibilities.
I am pretty confident that if Google had enabled this policy only for apps which use these permissions that the community would still be upset.
(I'm being facetious here but this is massively preferable to disabling sideloading altogether)
I am pretty confident that if Google had enabled this policy only for apps which use these permissions that the community would still be upset.
The motivating example as described involves "giving the scammer everything they need to drain the account". Once they've drained the account, they don't need ongoing access.
A root cause solution is proper sandboxing. Google and apple will not do this, because they rely on applications have far too much access to make their money.
One of the fundamentals of security is that applications should use the minimum data and access they need to operate. Apple and Google break this with every piece of software they make. The disease is spreading from the inside out. Putting a shitty lotion on top won't fix this.
Oh they do this quite well. Thing is, these sandboxes are meant to protect apps from you, not the other way around. That's why some apps - not just platform vendor apps but also select third-party apps - get special access and elevated privileges, while you can't even see what data they store in `/storage/emulated/0/android/data` even with ADB trickery.
Wow, that a major claim. What apps are malware, exactly?
>This is still not a root cause solution, it's just a mitigation.
Requiring signed apps solves the issue though, as it provides identification of whoever is running the scam and a method for remuneration or prosecution.
This has been going on for years, Google knows about it, and intentionally leaves it unfixed.
> Out of 47 Indian apps I randomly analyzed, 31 of them used the "ACTION_MAIN" filter - giving them access to see all the apps on your phone without any disclosure. That's 2 out of 3 apps.
Of course there's hundreds of other variants of malware, this is just one of the most prevalent.
I don't understand how this is a major claim at all, it should be obvious. All repositories of large enough sizes contain malware because malware doesn't declare itself as malware.
This is exacerbated by the fact the Google Play Store and Apple App Store allow closed-source applications. It's much easier to validate behavior on things like the Debian repos, where maintainers can, and do, audit the source code.
Google does not have a magic "is this malware" algorithm, that doesn't exist. They rely on heuristics and things like asking the authors "hey is this malware". As you can imagine, this isn't very effective. They don't even install and test the apps fully. Not that it matters much, obviously malware can easily change it's behavior to not be detectable from the end-user just running the app.
> Requiring signed apps solves the issue though, as it provides identification of whoever is running the scam and a method for remuneration or prosecution.
It doesn't, for three reasons:
1. Identifying an app doesn't magically make it not malware. I can tell you "hey I made this app" and you still have zero idea if it's malware. This is still a post mitigation. Meaning, if we somehow know an app is malware, we can find out who wrote it. It doesn't do the "is this malware" part of the mitigation, which is the most important part.
2. Bad actors typically have little allegiance to ethics, meaning they typically will not be honest about their identity. There are criminal organizations which operate in meatspace and fake their identities, which is 1000x harder than doing it online. Most malware will not have a legitimate identity tacked to it.
3. Bad actors typically come from countries which don't prosecute them as hard. So, even if you find out if something is malware, and then find out the actual people behind it, you typically can't prosecute them. Even large online services like the Silk Road lasted for a long time, and most likely still do exist, even despite the literal US federal government trying to stop them.
Why would an app silently intercepts SMS/MMS data ? Why does an app needs network access ?
Running untrusted code in your browser is also "a persistent technical compromise" but nobody seems to care.
the point of my comment was that the state does implement a lot of rules (read: "is a nanny"), despite the claim otherwise.
What?
although, i would imagine at some length, it becomes a "sword" (even if marketed as a knife) and falls under some other "nanny"-ing. i have not googled that.
That’s enough for me to distribute a few freedom devices to friends and neighbors, and still have extras to account for normal failures.
I also hoard source code, and will happily distribute that with the computers! Maybe that’s “programmer brained,” if so then fine by me!
Also every user is free to simply not use the option of installing things outside of the store.
Do you know anyone who works in a professional creative field that doesn't involve writing code? If so, ask them how they'd feel about their work bring out there on the internet free to all takers. What the implications would be for their ability to feed their children and pay their mortgage doing the things they love.
This is what I mean by "programmer-brained." Of all creative workers, only programmers seem okay with abolishing IP laws, I guess because they figure they'll be okay living out of an office at MIT, or even worse out of an office at some YC startup that turns the user into the product. But artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, etc. all put food on the table because of those IP laws programmers hate so much. Taking that protection for the fruit of your labor away would be at least as disruptive as AI has been.
No, no, a thousand times no. This is an argument for authoritarian clampdown on general computing and must be opposed by all means necessary. I have the right to run whatever code I wish on my own damn property without the permission of arbitrary authorities or whatever subset of society you favor, and if you or they have a problem with this, you or they can proceed to pound sand.
It’s a good time to buy a pallet of old SFF computers, just in case.
Edit: apparently if it isn’t a “marketable product” then the law may not apply. So far they haven’t enforced it against Linux distros, likely because of this exception. However, IANAL (and definitely not a Brazilian lawyer).
It's not really clear that this is money that needs to be laundered, it's often irreversible transfers that are legit.
> People are already effectively faking addresses for something as stupid as Amazon reviews. Apparently it's that cheap to fake an address, because those crapware spam stores that rotate their name/products/listings aren't exactly the size of the mob.
I already responded to this below. Those don't involve scammer controlled addresses. If I send you a piece of physical mail with an OTP code, you can't use a random faked address.
> clearing the field for "professionals" while at the same time making identity fraud, address fraud, and (money) mules more lucrative.
The majority of this kind of fraud is already organized. That's why raising the cost is impactful, see my comments below. It's a tool to raise the cost of revenues to an ideally unsustainable amount.
If you care about the topic, which you seemingly do, stop using this doubleplusgood term.
The stakes aren't any lower for us.
-- C.S. Lewis
the correct solution is of course education, but education takes time. we can educate today's children so that they can protect themselves in the future. but that's the next generation. for the current generation that kind of education is to late.
the proposed solution is a stopgap measure. do you have a better idea how to solve the problem? (maybe putting more effort into persecution, but that costs money. or making banks responsible for covering the loss. but then you'll get banks demanding the protection. tyranny of the banks then? is that any better? that's actually happening in europe now.)
not doing anything will hurt a lot of people and make them unhappy. as a government you really don't want that either.
I actually totally agree! There is no external entity users can rely on to make sure apps they download are legitimate. I read the thread from root to this comment and I don't see it mentioned, so I'm not sure if you know this and are just arguing something else but...
There is actually nothing about testing or verifying apps themselves in the announcement made by Google. It's just about enforcing developer verification in some Google service and "registering the apps".
https://support.google.com/android-developer-console/answer/... https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...
EDIT: I checked your profile, and I now see that you actually work at Google, on Android... Is there something I misunderstood about these announcements?
> you could argue it's a false sense of security, but it's still more security
Well here I don't agree, I would much rather be aware of the dangers than think I'm safe when I'm actually not.
how does it do that? (i am not getting hung up on "intuitive", i just mean you argue that the currently used design fuels incompetence)
how is a UI designed that doesn't fuel incompetence?
i have a hard time imagining what design aspects matter here, and how to improve upon them.
I'm specifically talking about UX ("how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system, or service"), not necessarily UI.
> how does it do that? (i am not getting hung up on "intuitive", i just mean you argue that the currently used design fuels incompetence)
tl;dr We have a product, we want to make money, we need people to use the product. One of the things that stand in the way, is people not understanding how to use our product. We will make sure they can get started as fast as possible, and not mention how they may hurt themselves with the product, that would scare them away. Hurting yourself with our product is in the broad "don't do stupid things" category. We will never explain the "framework" (in case of an OS I mean apps, that apps can interact with each other and your data, how you can or cannot, control that), even in broad terms. Just click this button and get your solution.
It started with PCs and people not understanding how to not lose their documents. Now that every device is connected to the internet, the problem became worse.
You can now say that "sideloading" is stupid anyway, but this is not the only problem. Another thing that people still usually learn by painful experience is backups. There are fake apps, on both stores. Another thing, in-band signaling. You cannot trust email, phones, whatsapp, messenger... Even if your friend you often chat with is messaging you, they could've just been hacked. Try to explain that you also cannot trust websites and that even technical people don't have a good way of telling if an email of a website is real.
But at least enrollment is fast and adoption metrics are growing. Since we are already in "move fast and break things" mindset, we will think about fixing such issues when it actually becomes a problem.
To be clear, I'm not saying that making technology easy is always bad, that you should always expose the user to "the elements" and expect them pipe commands in the shell. But I think that often the focus is on only making enrollment fast. "Get started"
What if we actually expected people to understand something about technologies they want to use?
Then make sideloading disabled by default but enable it when the users tap 7 times on whatever settings item. At that time, explain those "negative consequences" to them, explain them real good, don't spare anything and if they still hit "Yes, continue to enable sideloading" you do that immediately in order to avoid increasing their haplessness with other made-up excuses.
Simple.
That is where we differ. It is, ultimately, the victim of a scam who makes the choice of "yes, this person is trustworthy and I will do what they say". The only way to prevent that is to block the user from having the power to make that decision, which is to say protecting them from themselves.
If I write a trash library for a random project and someone else starts using it to run their nuke plant, that isn’t my fault. Read the license. NO WARRANTY.
So, having been given the proverbial inch (or centimeter), those obsessed with banning potentially-dangerous tools are trying to take the next mile (or kilometer): https://theconversation.com/why-stopping-knife-crime-needs-t...
The backdoored version of the app would need to have a different app ID, since the attacker does not have the legitimate publisher's signing keys. So the OS shouldn't let it access the legitimate app's credentials.
A simple scenario adapted from the one given in the android blog post: the attacker calls the victim and convinces them that their banking account is compromised, and they need to act now to secure it. The scammer tells the victim, that their account got compromised because they're using and outdated version of the banking app that's no longer suppported. He then walks them through "updating" their app, effectively going through the "new device" workflow - except the new device is the same as the old one, just with the backdoored app.
You can prevent this with attestation of course, essentially giving the bank's backend the ability to verify that the credentials are actually tied to their app, and not some backdoored version. But now you have a "blessed" key that's in the hands of Google or Apple or whomever, and everyone who wants to run other operating systems or even just patched versions of official apps is out of luck.
This is where the scheme breaks down: the new passkey credential can never be associated with the legitimate RP. The attacker will not be able to use the credential to sign in to the legitimate app/site and steal money.
The attacker controls the fake/backdoored app, but they do not control the signing key which is ultimately used to associate app <-> domain <-> passkey, and they do not control the system credentials service which checks this association. You don't even need attestation to prevent this scenario.
That doesn't work, because the scammer's app will be signed with a different key, so the relying party ID is different and the secure element (or whatever hardware backing you use), refuses to do the challenge-response.
The spoofed app can't request passkeys for the legit app because the legit app's domain is associated with the legit app's signing key fingerprint via .well-known/assetlinks.json, and the CredentialManager service checks that association.
How? You've now moved the level of sophistication required from "someone runs some bots on the facebook website" to "someone is now committing complex fraud against a government".
If the only people who can run scams are state sponsored, that's still vastly better than the status quo.
> Amazon has a huge problem with packages being sent to fake people at different addresses.
This usually involves those people getting weird packages and not doing anything with them, it doesn't require attacker-controlled addresses.
It is not enough to write "be careful" on a bag you get from a pharmacy... certain medications require you to both have a prescription, and also to have a conversation with a pharmacist because of how dangerous the decisions the consumer makes can be.
Normal human beings can be very dumb. It's entirely reasonable to expect society to try to protect them at some level.
There are alternative solutions if the true goal is maintaining user freedom while protecting dumb users. But that is not the true goal of the upcoming changes.
>There is a default restriction which is good enough for most cases, but the user has the ability to open things up further if he needs.
But this is what the other guy's point is. You are defining "good enough for most cases" in a way that he is not, then making the argument that what he says is equivalent to not allowing an alcoholic to buy beer. Why can you set what level is an acceptable amount of restriction, but he can't?
That is not true, as those apps declare that they collect app activity data in their Play Store page though.
But I'm afraid that this is security theater and the true goal is to protect revenues by making it hard or impossible to install apps that impact Alfabet bottom line (eg third party YouTube clients.)
It solves the 'smartest bear / dumbest human' overlap design concern in this situation.
But I guess not reading the TOS is another wide problem, also fueled by companies like Google.
relatively easy for devs, but hard to scale for scammers
but that's what we have now, and it's not working.
the implied question is: what if we don't allow people to use technology unless they can demonstrate that they understand it?
is that really something we want to do? this sounds like gatekeeping, elitism, and anti-innovation because if if less people are going to use a technology, then there is less motivation to build it.
remember, i think it was someone at IBM that said that the potential for computers is some small number? and then it grew beyond anyone's wildest expectations?
do you think that would have happened if we had required understanding before we let anyone buy a home computer?
besides education, i don't know how to approach this issue.
My entire point is that education is the opposite of what we have now. That users are not expected to understand or know anything about IT technologies they use. Not the case with cars, recreational and prescription drugs...
> the implied question is: what if we don't allow people to use technology unless they can demonstrate that they understand it?
It's not exactly my point, but in extreme cases, maybe. I genuinely think that nobody has even tried to educate people about computers. Like, have you seen IT classes in schools? Assuming you are lucky enough for the classes to have any content, you will probably get some lessons in Word and Excel. Maybe some programming. Maybe Paint. But actually using the computer? Dangers of the internet, importance of backups, trusting websites, applications and emails? The concept of application and difference between applications and websites? And those technologies are not "developing" like they were 20 years ago, they are probably here to stay.
> is that really something we want to do? this sounds like gatekeeping, elitism, and anti-innovation because if if less people are going to use a technology, then there is less motivation to build it.
And the alternative Google and Apple present is giving them paternalizing control over the most popular computing device. The say over what people can do with their devices. After they made sure that these devices are embedded into our lives. I would much rather we slowed down with innovation for a second and resolved such issues first, because the way I see it, it's literally manipulation (also see: dark patterns).
As for the gatekeeping and etilism - Assuming we want a "computing license" (not necessarily what I'm arguing for), is "driving license" also gatekeeping and etilism? Or maybe some amount of gatekeeping is good?
As for anti-innovation - I genuinely think we might have had just enough innovation in the field and it may be time to slow down a little, take a step back and evaluate the results. And I honestly don't see much innovation in apps/computers/web space besides maybe AI, and governments are already working on regulating that.
> do you think that would have happened if we had required understanding before we let anyone buy a home computer?
Home computers were very harmless before the internet, but that's an aside. Assuming the tech is actually useful, not just slightly more convenient than "traditional" alternatives, then yes, I'm sure it would have still grown to sizes it has grown to today. Maybe a bit slower.
> besides education, i don't know how to approach this issue.
Same, I generally do think this whole situation needs more consideration.
No need for locking down the app ecosystem, no need to verify developers. Just don't use phishable credentials and you are not vulnerable to malware trying to phish credentials.
0: https://www.bankofamerica.com/.well-known/assetlinks.json
Fine, just:
- Don't reset it every 5 days / 5 hours / 5dBm blip in Wi-Fi strength, because this pretty much defeats end-user automation, whether persistent or event-driven. This is the current situation with "Wireless Debugging", otherwise cool trick for "rootless root", if it only didn't require being connected to Wi-Fi (and not just a Wi-Fi, but the same AP, breaking when device roams in multi-AP networks).
- Don't announce the fact that this is on to everyone. Many commercial vendors, including those who shouldn't and those who have no business caring, are very interested in knowing whether your device is running with debugging features enabled, and if so, deny service.
Unfortunately, in a SaaS world it's the service providers that have all the leverage - if they don't like your device, they can always refuse service. Increasingly many do.
Prediction: Android will roll out a flow for “experienced users” that they promised in November with “in the coming months” (https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...), which will allow “experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified”. And even then people will still complain Google is being too controlling by making the warnings too scary / the process too onerous, etc. (I don't expect installing apps from source via adb connected to laptop to go away!)
Google isn't approving apps though. A developer provides identity verification and a set of apps (apk names & keys) they are responsible for. There is no verification process or approval from google. The entire process as outlined in https://developer.android.com/developer-verification is that you prove you own signing keys for an apk name.
Developers want developer phones, non-developers want safe phones that are resistant to their and their shitty bank's goddamn fucking stupidity. (Because banks UX is so so so so bad that most of the time the phishing attack seems like just a normal part of the bank's UX.)
But it's hard to separate people on a webshop, if a shop runs out of non-developer phones they'll happily sell the developer phones to non-developers.
Let me know when you can provide a single specific name.
First Google search https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/08/77-malicious-...
Here's 77 found by researchers and then removed. Relying on researchers to find malware isn't a very good bet.
If I were a betting man, I would say there are thousands of apps on the play store that you can classify as malware.
We will never know the true number because one of the primary goals of malware is to be as difficult to detect as possible. They're not going to declare they're malware, duh.
If you know of some algorithm to detect malware, I'd love to hear it. Evidently even trillion dollar companies cannot come up with one. To this day, the best way to detect malware is source code analysis and thorough behavior testing.
Google and Apple do neither. Those are just the facts. Do with that what you will, I don't care.
>The core payload has been updated to incorporate a new keylogger variant of Anatsa. Additionally, the malware utilizes a well-known Android APK ZIP obfuscator for enhanced evasion. The DEX payload is concealed within a JSON file, which is dynamically dropped at runtime and promptly deleted after being loaded.
I wonder if there is anything that Google can do to prevent this specific attack. :)
This could work, but the issue here is that a lot of these scams rely on the "zero cost"-ness of turnup and use that as a asymmetry. If it costs you nothing to turn up new scam-accounts, and it costs me something to investigate and remove them, you win. If it costs you $10 to create new scam accounts then as long as I can get the EV of a scam account below $10, the scam isn't worthwhile.
It's not just them. Every other SaaS, from banks to media providers to E2EE[0] chat clients to random apps whose makers feel insecure, or are obsessed with security [theater] best practices, just salivate at the thought of being able to check if you're a deviant running with root or debugging privileges, all because ${complex web of excuses that often sound plausible if you don't look too closely}. There's a huge demand for device attestation, remote or otherwise.
--
[0] - End-to-end Enshittified.
A non-trivial number of people should probably have to go see a specialist before being able to unlock sideloading in my opinion... which means we probably all would have to. It's annoying, but I actually care about other people.
Doesnt android require a specific permission to be user-accepted for an installed app to read notifications? I think it's separate from the post-notifications permission.
This seems to be an issue of user literacy. If so, doesn't it make more sense for a user to have the option to opt into "I'm tech illiterate, please protect me" than destroy open computing as we know it?
In an ideal world where governments and corporations weren't trying to lock us into a closed system for massive surveillance and control, during the installation/setup of a mobile phone should be a question about tech literacy and protection. Selecting any option that isn't "I'm tech illiterate, please protect me" should be very annoying. There should be many warnings in uppercase bold red letters telling the user it can be dangerous and listing those dangers. But if I'm a developer and want to patch my kernel or modify the system as I please, I should be able to do so. If i want to install a malware app in a burner phone to study its behavior (or just for fun) I should be able to do so.
There would probably be one or two grandmas that would still somehow choose the pro hacker mode and get scammed down the line, but I think that minuscule amount of harm done is very much preferable to closing out *literally everyone else* from using the devices THEY BOUGHT.
You're assuming the attacker must go through the credential manager and the backing hardware, but that is only the case with attestation. Without it, the attacker can simply generate their own passkey in software, because the backend on the banks side would have no way of telling where the passkey came from.
What a quote. My word.
It's a big repository, it's a lot of code, and Google has read approximately 0% of it. Fucking obviously there's malware, it's not rocket science.
My biggest mistake is humoring people who either play stupid or are so stupid that they can barely function. Why do I do this? Is this a form of masochism? Is there a medicine for this? And, if so, is it in-network?