This is going to hurt legitimate sideloading way more than actually necessary to reduce scams:
- Must enable developer mode -- some apps (e.g., banking apps) will refuse to operate and such when developer mode is on, and so if you depend on such apps, I guess you just can't sideload?
- One-day (day!!!) waiting period to activate (one-time) -- the vast majority of people who need to sideload something will probably not be willing to wait a day, and will thus just not sideload unless they really have no choice for what they need. This kills the pathway for new users to sideload apps that have similar functionality to those on the Play Store.
The rest -- restarting, confirming you aren't being coached, and per-install warnings -- would be just as effective alone to "protect users," but with those prior two points, it's clear that this is just simply intended to make sideloading so inconvenient that many won't bother or can't (dev mode req.).
>- Must enable developer mode -- some apps (e.g., banking apps) will refuse to operate and such when developer mode is on, and so if you depend on such apps, I guess you just can't sideload?
Hi, I'm the community engagement manager @ Android. It's my understanding that you don't have to keep developer options enabled after you enable the advanced flow. Once you make the change on your device, it's enabled.
If you turn off developer options, then to turn off the advanced flow, you would first have to turn developer options back on.
>- One-day (day!!!) waiting period to activate (one-time) -- the vast majority of people who need to sideload something will probably not be willing to wait a day, and will thus just not sideload unless they really have no choice for what they need.
ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.
> ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.
Someone is just going to make a nice GUI application for sideloading apks with a single drag-and-drop, so if your idea is that ADB is a way to ensure only "users who know what they're doing" are gonna sideload, you've done nothing. This is all security theatre.
If you mean things like Shizuku or local adb connection through Termux, it's quite an awkward process to set up even for someone like me who's been building Android apps since 2011. Like, you can do if you really really need it, but most people won't bother. You have to do it again after every reboot, too.
Do I need to be signed in to Google play to get the sideloading exception turned on? I don't sign in to it because I don't want to have my phone associated with a Google account. But I can't uninstall play completely on the devices I have.
It says something about 'restart your phone and reauthenticate' that's why I'm asking. What do you autenticate?
> ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.
Um yeah but then do I have to install every update via adb? I want to just use F-Droid.
So... we're just going to move the scam into convincing the end user to run an application on their PC to ADB sideload the Scam App. Got it, simple enough. It's not hard to coach a user into clicking the "no, I'm not being coached" button, too, to guide them towards the ADB enable flow.
> - Must enable developer mode -- some apps (e.g., banking apps) will refuse to operate and such when developer mode is on, and so if you depend on such apps, I guess you just can't sideload?
What apps are those? I've yet to run into any of my banking apps that refuse to run with developer mode enabled. I've seen a few that do that for rooted phones but that's a different story. I've been running android for a decade and a half now with developer mode turned on basically the whole time and never had an app refuse to load because of it.
The one-day waiting period is so arbitrary. Have they demonstrated any supporting data? We know google loves to flaunt data.
Something like Github's approach of forcing users to type the name of the repo they wish to delete would seem to be more than sufficient to protect technically disinclined users while still allowing technically aware users to do what they please with their own device.
Brother, there's an entire genre of scamming where the scammers spend months building rapport with their victims, usually without ever asking for anything, before "cashing out". One day is nothing.
This is obvious to anyone with a brain. I'm not familiar with scam logistics or the videos you mentioned, and the exact same line you put in quotes is what first came to my mind.
tl;dr of this post is that Google wants to lock down Android and be a gatekeeper. Every other point of discussion is just a distraction.
Sure, but what about a 30 minute delay? 1 hour? 2 hour?
24 is just so long.
But also, my expectation is that a scammer is going to just automate the flow here anyways. Cool, you hit the "24 hour" wait period, I'll call you back tomorrow, the next day, or the next day and continue the scam process.
It might stop some less sophisticated spammers for a little bit, but I expect that it'll just be a few tweaks to make it work again.
24 hours is long enough to get them off the phone, and potentially talking to other people who might recognize the scam.
There will be some proportion of people who mention to their spouse/child/friend about how Google called them to fix their phone, and are saved by that waiting period.
Have you ever watched Kitboga? Scammers call people back all the time. They keep spreadsheets of their marks like a CRM. It takes time to build trust and victimize someone, and these scammers are very patient.
We'll see when this rolls out, but I don't foresee the package manager checking for developer mode when launching "unverified" apps, just when installing them. AFAICT the verification service is only queried on install currently.
Googler here (community engagement for Android) - I looked into the developer options question, and it's my understanding that you don't have to keep developer options enabled after you enable the advanced flow. Once you make the change on your device, it's enabled.
If you turn off developer options, then to turn off the advanced flow, you would first have to turn developer options back on.
You have to wait one day only once, when enabling the feature. I agree that enabling developer mode could be a problem but mostly because it's buried below screens and multiple touches. As a data point, I enabled developer mode on all my devices since 2011 and no banking app complained about it. But it could depend by the different banking systems of our countries.
As described developer mode is only required at install time. Remains to be seen in the actual implementation, but as described in the post developer mode can be switched off after apps have been side loaded.
Yes, it is really dumb that some of these settings are exposed to all apps with no permission gating [0]. But it will likely always be possible to fingerprint based on enabled developer options because there are preferences which can only be enabled via the developer options UI and (arguably) need to be visible to apps.
Because estimates suggest Americans lose about $119 billion annually to financial scams, which is a not insignificant fraction of our entire military budget, or more than 5% of annual social security expenditures.
Most of the victims were last in school in the 1960s when all this stuff didn't exist. Also from experience teaching people with dementia or memory issues is kinda challenging as they just forget.
I'd rather not have to go through this ritual, but I appreciate that there is a genuine security problem that google are trying to address. I also suspect that they have other motivations bound-up in this - principally discouraging use of alternative app stores. But basically I could live with this process.
Yeah, I know... Stockholm syndrome...
Although I may not have to live with it, as none of my present devices are recent enough to still receive ota updates.
Context: I don't use alternative app stores. I occasionally side-load updates to apps that I've written myself, and very occasionally third party apps from trusted sources.
At this point I'm convinced that there's something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology.
Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people is the wrong solution. It's unsustainable in the long run. Also, the last thing this world needs right now is even more centralization of power. Especially around yet another US company.
People who are unwilling to figure out the risks just should not use smartphones and the internet. They should not use internet banking. They should probably not have a bank account at all and just stick to cash. And the society should be able to accommodate such people — which is not that hard, really. Just roll back some of the so-called innovations that happened over the last 15 years. Whether someone uses technology, and how much they do, should be a choice, not a burden.
The forced ID for developers outside the Play store is already killing open source projects you could get on F-Droid. The EU really needs to identify this platform gatekeeping as a threat. As an EU citizen I should not be forced to give government ID to a US company, which can blacklist me without recourse, in order to share apps with other EU citizens on devices we own.
The DSA covers App stores with a large numbers of users - this is about allowing users side load unsigned apps. Afaik there is no requirement to identify the developers of applications that can be installed on a vendors platform (outside the app store). Otherwise Microsoft would require Government ID to compile and email someone an EXE.
I'm not in agreement with most of you, hn. They've found a decent compromise that works for power users and the general population. Your status as a power user does not invalidate the need to help the more vulnerable.
Having to wait a day for a one off isn't a big deal, if they kept it looser then you'd be shouting about the amount of scams that propagate on the platform.
Death, taxes and escalating safety are the only certainities in this tech dominated world. So, be ready for more safety in the next round few months/years down the line. Eventually Android will become as secure as ios. We need a third alternative before that day comes.
It's not a win by any means. I hope that we don't stop making noise.
I'm generally OK with this, but the 24 hour hang time does seem a bit onerous.
Most of the apps on my phone are installed from F-Droid. I guess the next time I get a new phone I'll have to wait at least 24 hours for it to become useful.
I'm seriously considering Graphene for a next personal device and whatever the cheapest iOS device is for work.
The apps might not be available though. Many developers are simply stopping in the face of Google's invasive policies. I don't blame them. Say goodbye to useful apps like Newpipe.
A few apps have been showing pop-ups warning users in advance that they are not going to do the verification. Obtanium is definitely on of them. I think I saw something similar on NewPipe.
This 24-hour wait time nonsense is a humiliation ritual designed to invalidate any expectation of Android being an open platform. The messaging is very clear and the writing's on the wall now, there's nowhere to go from here but down.
Do you need a Google account to opt out of the restriction? It says something about authenticating.
I don't have a Google account on my Androids. But I can't remove play services on them, sadly. As an intermediate protection I just don't sign in to Google play, that gives them at least a bit less identifying information to play with.
24 hour mandatory wait time to side load!? All apps I want to use on my phone are not in the Play Store. So I buy a new phone (or wipe a used phone) and then I can’t even use it for 24 hours?
The 24 hour wait period is the largest of the annoyances in this list, but given that adb installs still work, I think this is a list of things I can ultimately live with.
Honestly, if coerced sideloading is a real attack vector, then this seems to be a pretty fair compromise.
I just remain skeptical that this tactic is successful on modern Android, with all the settings and scare screens you need to go through in order to sideload an app and grant dangerous permissions.
I expect scammers will move to pre-packaged software with a bundled ADB client for Windows/Mac, then the flow is "enable developer options" -> "enable usb debugging" -> "install malware and grant permissions with one click over ADB". People with laptops are more lucrative targets anyway.
After today's announced policy goes into effect, it will be easier to coach users to install a Progressive Web App ("Installable Web Apps") than it will be to coach users to sideload a native Android app, even if the Android app has no permissions to do anything more than what an Installable Web App can do: make basic HTTPS requests and store some app-local data. (99% of apps need no more permissions than that!)
I think Google believes it should be easy to install a web app. It should be just as easy to sideload a native app with limited permissions. But it should be very hard/expensive for a malware author to anonymously distribute an app with the permission to intercept texts and calls.
I don't think Google has a strategy around what should be easy for users to do. PWAs still lack native capabilities and are obviously shortcuts to Chrome, and Google pushes developers to Trusted Web Activities which need to be published on the Play Store or sideloaded.
But these developer verification policies don't make any exceptions for permission-light apps, nor do they make it harder to sideload apps which request dangerous permissions, they just identify developers. I also suspect that making developer verification dependent on app manifest permissions opens up a bypass, as the package manager would need to check both on each update instead of just on first install.
Yep, I have a legitimate use case for exactly this. It integrates directly with my application and gives it native phone capabilities that are unavailable if I were to use a VoIP provider of any kind.
As a legitimate developer developing an app with the power to take over the phone, I think it's appropriate to ask you to verify your identity. It should be an affordable one-time verification process.
This should not be required for apps that do HTTPS requests and store app-local data, like 99%+ of all apps, including 99% of F-Droid apps.
But, in my opinion, the benefit of anonymity to you is much smaller than the harm of anonymous malware authors coaching/coercing users to install phone-takeover apps.
(I'm sure you and I won't agree about this; I bet you have a principled stand that you should be able to anonymously distribute malware phone-takeover apps because "I own my device," and so everyone must be vulnerable to being coerced to install malware under that ethical principle. It's a reasonable stance, but I don't share it, and I don't think most people share it.)
I think you read a bit too much into my message. I agree, it's complicated, I don't want my parents and grandparents easily getting scammed.
But yes they are my devices, and I should be able to do exactly what I want with them. If I'm forced to deal with other developers incredibly shitty decisions around how they treat VoIP numbers, guess who's going to have a stack of phones with cheap plans in the office instead of paying a VoIP provider...
But no, I have no interest in actually distributing software like that further than than the phones sitting in my office.
For a security-sensitive permission like intercepting texts and calls, I'm not sure it makes sense for that to be anonymous at all, not even for local development, not even for students/hobbyists.
Getting someone to verify their identity before they have the permission to completely takeover my phone feels pretty reasonable to me. It should be a cheap, one-time process to verify your identity and develop an app with that much power.
I can already hear the reply, "What a slippery slope! First Google will make you verify identity for complete phone takeovers, but soon enough they'll try to verify developer identity for all apps."
But if I'm forced to choose between "any malware author can anonymously intercept texts and calls" or "only identified developers can do that, and maybe someday Google will go too far with it," I'm definitely picking the latter.
> Honestly, if coerced sideloading is a real attack vector, [...]
I don't believe that it is. I follow this "scene" pretty closely, and that means I read about successful scams all the time. They happen in huge numbers. Yet I have never encountered a reliable report of one that utilized a "sideloaded"[1] malicious app. Not once. Phishing email messages and web sites, sure. This change will not help counter those, though.
I don't even see what you could accomplish with a malicious app that you couldn't otherwise. I would certainly be interested to hear of any real world cases demonstrating the danger.
[1] When I was a kid, this was called "installing."
I wonder how long this will last before they lock it down further. There was a lot of pushback this time around and they still ended up increasing the temperature of the metaphorical boiling frog. It still seems like they're pushing towards the Apple model where those who don't want to self-dox and/or pay get a very limited key (what Google currently calls "limited distribution accounts").
I'll say it again: this isn't a problem for Android to solve. Scammers will naturally adapt their "processes" to account for this 24-hour requirement and IMO it might make it seem more legitimate to the victim because there's less urgency.
The onus of protecting people's wealth should fall on the bank / institution who manages that persons wealth.
Nevertheless, this solution is better than ID verification for devs.
Why should the bank/institution be responsible for protecting individuals from themselves? They don't have police power- protecting people from bad actors is like, the reason to have a state. If the state wishes to farm it out to third parties, then we don't need the state anymore!
Yea I have no idea why the original commenter thinks Banks should have the power to tell me what I can and can't do with my own money.
It's nice that Zelle has checks and identity information shown to you when you're sending money, but if I click through 5 screens that say "Yes I know this person" but I actually don't.....no amount of regulation is going to solve that.
Banks absolutely have that power and will stop transactions that seem suspicious or fraudulent already, no? Sometimes they'll call/text to verify you want it go through. I imagine that type of thing but cranked up for accounts flagged "vulnerable" where a family or the person themselves can check a box saying "yes, lockdown this account heavily please" (or whatever you can imagine, idk, I'm not a bank)
The bank/institution is where the money is leaving from therefore they should implement policies that protect vulnerable customers like seniors, for example. I don't know how that looks but it seems reasonable that they could put limits on an account flagged "vulnerable person"
I'm not sure what you're getting at with the rant about police power and a state? Google isn't the government either. What would legislation provide that banks can't already do today?
It's not like the Google Play store hasn't been known to host malicious apps, yet you are not required to wait 24 hours before you install apps from their store.
I suspect they are hoping users just give up and go to the play store instead. Google touts about "Play Protect" which scans all apps on the device, even those from unknown sources so these measures can barely be justified.
Imagine if Microsoft said you need to wait 24 hours before installing a program not from their store, which is against the entire premise of windows.
Computing, I once believed was based on an open idea that people made software and you could install it freely, yes there are bad actors, but that's why we had antivirus and other protection methods, now we're inch by inch losing those freedoms. iOS wants you to enter your date of birth now.
The future feels very uncertain, but we need to protect the little freedoms we have left, once they're gone, they're gone for good.
Meh. I get the annoyance, but it's a one time cost for a small subset of their users. I would prefer if there was a flow during device setup that allowed you to opt into developer mode (with all the attendant big scary warnings), but it's a pretty reasonable balance for the vast majority of their users. (I suspect the number of scammers that are able to get a victim to buy a whole new device and onboard it is probably very low).
They'll just remove the "Advanced" ability in a few years once they've frog boiled people into jumping through hoops to use their phone the way they want.
Developers, including non-US citizens, are forced to give Google their government ID to distribute apps. This enables Google to track and censor projects, like NewPipe, an alternative open source Youtube frontend, by revoking signing permissions for developers.
>Developers, including non-US citizens, are forced to give Google their government ID to distribute apps.
Developers can choose to not undergo verification, thereby remaining anonymous. The only change is that their applications will need to be installed via ADB and/or this new advanced flow on certified Android devices.
Either way, you can still distribute your apps wherever you want. If you verify your identity, then there are no changes to the existing installation flow from a user perspective. If you choose not to verify your identity, then the installation will still be possible but only through high-friction methods (ADB, advanced flow). These methods are high-friction so anonymous scammers can't easily coerce their victims into installing malicious software.
That's not correct - the flow described in the post outlines the requirements to install any apps that haven't had their signature registered with Google.
That means those apps still keep on existing, they are just more of a hassle to install.
This. Side loading being restricted is only one part of the problem; the other is mandatory developer verification for apps distributed through the Play Store.
They already announced it. Here they only mention the special case where it does not apply:
> In addition to the advanced flow we’re building free, limited distribution accounts for students and hobbyists. This allows you to share apps with a small group (up to 20 devices) without needing to provide a government-issued ID or pay a registration fee.
i.e. Government-issued ID and fees are needed for more than 20 devices, e,g, every app on F-Droid
It's a little inconvenient for someone setting up a new phone to have to wait a full day to install unregistered apps. But while I can't speak for others, it's a price I'm personally willing to pay to make the types of scams they mention much less effective. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
- Must enable developer mode -- some apps (e.g., banking apps) will refuse to operate and such when developer mode is on, and so if you depend on such apps, I guess you just can't sideload?
- One-day (day!!!) waiting period to activate (one-time) -- the vast majority of people who need to sideload something will probably not be willing to wait a day, and will thus just not sideload unless they really have no choice for what they need. This kills the pathway for new users to sideload apps that have similar functionality to those on the Play Store.
The rest -- restarting, confirming you aren't being coached, and per-install warnings -- would be just as effective alone to "protect users," but with those prior two points, it's clear that this is just simply intended to make sideloading so inconvenient that many won't bother or can't (dev mode req.).
Hi, I'm the community engagement manager @ Android. It's my understanding that you don't have to keep developer options enabled after you enable the advanced flow. Once you make the change on your device, it's enabled.
If you turn off developer options, then to turn off the advanced flow, you would first have to turn developer options back on.
>- One-day (day!!!) waiting period to activate (one-time) -- the vast majority of people who need to sideload something will probably not be willing to wait a day, and will thus just not sideload unless they really have no choice for what they need.
ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.
Someone is just going to make a nice GUI application for sideloading apks with a single drag-and-drop, so if your idea is that ADB is a way to ensure only "users who know what they're doing" are gonna sideload, you've done nothing. This is all security theatre.
Not applying the policy to adb installs makes a lot more sense if the people this is trying to protect don't have a computer
This just adds the step of "download Cool ABD Installer from the play store" to the set of directions I would think.
It says something about 'restart your phone and reauthenticate' that's why I'm asking. What do you autenticate?
> ADB installs are not impacted by the waiting period, so that is an option if you need to install certain unregistered applications immediately.
Um yeah but then do I have to install every update via adb? I want to just use F-Droid.
What apps are those? I've yet to run into any of my banking apps that refuse to run with developer mode enabled. I've seen a few that do that for rooted phones but that's a different story. I've been running android for a decade and a half now with developer mode turned on basically the whole time and never had an app refuse to load because of it.
Something like Github's approach of forcing users to type the name of the repo they wish to delete would seem to be more than sufficient to protect technically disinclined users while still allowing technically aware users to do what they please with their own device.
Scammers aren't going to wait on the phone for a day with your elderly parent.
"Google will call you again tomorrow to get you your refund."
There, we've successfully circumvented all of Google's security engineering on this "feature."
https://youtu.be/YIR-nJv_-VA?t=121
They don't mind being patient when they have dozens of other victims in the wait queue.
tl;dr of this post is that Google wants to lock down Android and be a gatekeeper. Every other point of discussion is just a distraction.
24 is just so long.
But also, my expectation is that a scammer is going to just automate the flow here anyways. Cool, you hit the "24 hour" wait period, I'll call you back tomorrow, the next day, or the next day and continue the scam process.
It might stop some less sophisticated spammers for a little bit, but I expect that it'll just be a few tweaks to make it work again.
There will be some proportion of people who mention to their spouse/child/friend about how Google called them to fix their phone, and are saved by that waiting period.
They have infinite time and patience.
If you turn off developer options, then to turn off the advanced flow, you would first have to turn developer options back on.
Google: I already said I love it, you don’t have to sell it to me.
JFC. Why would an app be allowed to know this? Just another datapoint for fingerprinting.
0: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Set...
Yeah, I know... Stockholm syndrome...
Although I may not have to live with it, as none of my present devices are recent enough to still receive ota updates.
Context: I don't use alternative app stores. I occasionally side-load updates to apps that I've written myself, and very occasionally third party apps from trusted sources.
Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people is the wrong solution. It's unsustainable in the long run. Also, the last thing this world needs right now is even more centralization of power. Especially around yet another US company.
People who are unwilling to figure out the risks just should not use smartphones and the internet. They should not use internet banking. They should probably not have a bank account at all and just stick to cash. And the society should be able to accommodate such people — which is not that hard, really. Just roll back some of the so-called innovations that happened over the last 15 years. Whether someone uses technology, and how much they do, should be a choice, not a burden.
So long as the 5g chips and the 2 mobile app stores remain under control, then 5 eyes has nearly full coverage.
Having to wait a day for a one off isn't a big deal, if they kept it looser then you'd be shouting about the amount of scams that propagate on the platform.
It's not a win by any means. I hope that we don't stop making noise.
Wondering how long the blogpost would be if it explained what the flow for corpoloading applications approved by Google's shareholders would be?
Most of the apps on my phone are installed from F-Droid. I guess the next time I get a new phone I'll have to wait at least 24 hours for it to become useful.
I'm seriously considering Graphene for a next personal device and whatever the cheapest iOS device is for work.
I don't have a Google account on my Androids. But I can't remove play services on them, sadly. As an intermediate protection I just don't sign in to Google play, that gives them at least a bit less identifying information to play with.
I hope this can be done without a Google account.
You will not need a Google account.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...?
Edit: I've put one up there now - if there's a better article, let us know and we can change it again. I put the submitted URL in the toptext.
Now if only Android would allow for stronger sandboxing of apps (i.e. lie to them about any and all system settings).
I just remain skeptical that this tactic is successful on modern Android, with all the settings and scare screens you need to go through in order to sideload an app and grant dangerous permissions.
I expect scammers will move to pre-packaged software with a bundled ADB client for Windows/Mac, then the flow is "enable developer options" -> "enable usb debugging" -> "install malware and grant permissions with one click over ADB". People with laptops are more lucrative targets anyway.
The use case they're trying to protect against is malware authors "coaching" users to install their app.
In November, they specifically called out anonymous malware apps with the permission to intercept text messages and phone calls (circumventing two-factor authentication). https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...
After today's announced policy goes into effect, it will be easier to coach users to install a Progressive Web App ("Installable Web Apps") than it will be to coach users to sideload a native Android app, even if the Android app has no permissions to do anything more than what an Installable Web App can do: make basic HTTPS requests and store some app-local data. (99% of apps need no more permissions than that!)
I think Google believes it should be easy to install a web app. It should be just as easy to sideload a native app with limited permissions. But it should be very hard/expensive for a malware author to anonymously distribute an app with the permission to intercept texts and calls.
But these developer verification policies don't make any exceptions for permission-light apps, nor do they make it harder to sideload apps which request dangerous permissions, they just identify developers. I also suspect that making developer verification dependent on app manifest permissions opens up a bypass, as the package manager would need to check both on each update instead of just on first install.
And how hard/expensive should it be for the developer of a legitimate F/OSS app to intercept calls/texts?
This should not be required for apps that do HTTPS requests and store app-local data, like 99%+ of all apps, including 99% of F-Droid apps.
But, in my opinion, the benefit of anonymity to you is much smaller than the harm of anonymous malware authors coaching/coercing users to install phone-takeover apps.
(I'm sure you and I won't agree about this; I bet you have a principled stand that you should be able to anonymously distribute malware phone-takeover apps because "I own my device," and so everyone must be vulnerable to being coerced to install malware under that ethical principle. It's a reasonable stance, but I don't share it, and I don't think most people share it.)
But yes they are my devices, and I should be able to do exactly what I want with them. If I'm forced to deal with other developers incredibly shitty decisions around how they treat VoIP numbers, guess who's going to have a stack of phones with cheap plans in the office instead of paying a VoIP provider...
But no, I have no interest in actually distributing software like that further than than the phones sitting in my office.
Getting someone to verify their identity before they have the permission to completely takeover my phone feels pretty reasonable to me. It should be a cheap, one-time process to verify your identity and develop an app with that much power.
I can already hear the reply, "What a slippery slope! First Google will make you verify identity for complete phone takeovers, but soon enough they'll try to verify developer identity for all apps."
But if I'm forced to choose between "any malware author can anonymously intercept texts and calls" or "only identified developers can do that, and maybe someday Google will go too far with it," I'm definitely picking the latter.
I don't believe that it is. I follow this "scene" pretty closely, and that means I read about successful scams all the time. They happen in huge numbers. Yet I have never encountered a reliable report of one that utilized a "sideloaded"[1] malicious app. Not once. Phishing email messages and web sites, sure. This change will not help counter those, though.
I don't even see what you could accomplish with a malicious app that you couldn't otherwise. I would certainly be interested to hear of any real world cases demonstrating the danger.
[1] When I was a kid, this was called "installing."
- You need to enable developer mode
- You need to click through a few scare dialogs
- You need to wait 24h once
I wonder how long this will last before they lock it down further. There was a lot of pushback this time around and they still ended up increasing the temperature of the metaphorical boiling frog. It still seems like they're pushing towards the Apple model where those who don't want to self-dox and/or pay get a very limited key (what Google currently calls "limited distribution accounts").
This is so overt.
The onus of protecting people's wealth should fall on the bank / institution who manages that persons wealth.
Nevertheless, this solution is better than ID verification for devs.
It's nice that Zelle has checks and identity information shown to you when you're sending money, but if I click through 5 screens that say "Yes I know this person" but I actually don't.....no amount of regulation is going to solve that.
I'm not sure what you're getting at with the rant about police power and a state? Google isn't the government either. What would legislation provide that banks can't already do today?
I suspect they are hoping users just give up and go to the play store instead. Google touts about "Play Protect" which scans all apps on the device, even those from unknown sources so these measures can barely be justified.
Imagine if Microsoft said you need to wait 24 hours before installing a program not from their store, which is against the entire premise of windows.
Computing, I once believed was based on an open idea that people made software and you could install it freely, yes there are bad actors, but that's why we had antivirus and other protection methods, now we're inch by inch losing those freedoms. iOS wants you to enter your date of birth now.
The future feels very uncertain, but we need to protect the little freedoms we have left, once they're gone, they're gone for good.
Developers can choose to not undergo verification, thereby remaining anonymous. The only change is that their applications will need to be installed via ADB and/or this new advanced flow on certified Android devices.
Either way, you can still distribute your apps wherever you want. If you verify your identity, then there are no changes to the existing installation flow from a user perspective. If you choose not to verify your identity, then the installation will still be possible but only through high-friction methods (ADB, advanced flow). These methods are high-friction so anonymous scammers can't easily coerce their victims into installing malicious software.
That means those apps still keep on existing, they are just more of a hassle to install.
> In addition to the advanced flow we’re building free, limited distribution accounts for students and hobbyists. This allows you to share apps with a small group (up to 20 devices) without needing to provide a government-issued ID or pay a registration fee.
i.e. Government-issued ID and fees are needed for more than 20 devices, e,g, every app on F-Droid
Note that the OP is about side loading, i.e. installing apps from non-Play Store sources and thereby circumventing developer verification.