Starting in 2027, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.
This includes apps shared between friends, distributed through F-Droid, built by hobbyists for personal use.
Independent developers, church and community groups, and hobbyists alike will all be frozen out of being able to develop and distribute their software.
Registration requires:
- Paying a fee to Google
- Agreeing to Google's Terms and Conditions
- Surrendering your government-issued identification
- Providing evidence of your private signing key
- Listing all current and all future application identifiers
If a developer does not comply, their apps get silently blocked on every Android device worldwide.
I understand why you didn't mention it, but there is an opt-out: you enable developer mode and wait 24 hours.
As it runs through Google Play Services, it's pretty likely they'll boil the frog and make it even harder in the future. Moving to an open platform is a good idea.
I seem to recall some apps refusing to run if developer mode is enabled. A workaround that means I can no longer use the apps I use every day isn't much of a workaround.
Is it Developer mode those apps trip on or USB debugging? I've seen several examples of the latter but haven't come across the former yet. I run Google-free Android (14, 15, 16) devices which run the Swedish and Dutch banking and e-ID apps I use on, some of these only work when USB debugging is disabled while others don't care. Some of them complain about Google Play Services not being available but they run nevertheless, that warning is produced by some part of the SDK which gets imported at build time but it does not (yet...) disable anything.
Once enabled, it stays enabled even after developer mode is turned back off. It's also associated to the Google account (if any) so later device purchase don't have to wait the 24 hours period
This keeps getting missed out every time it's reported. I can't figure out whether people genuinely don't know, or they're trying to push a narrative that this is worse than it is
Firstly, TFA has a bright red banner describing the opt-out mechanism. It's probably the second most attention-grabbing element on the page, after the countdown. Secondly, initially Google didn't mention any plans for an opt-out at all[1]. That was was only ceded after pushback[2].
As I understand it, you yourself will also need a google account to unlock the setting to "sideload" in the hidden "developer options" before waiting 24 hours.
What I am not sure is what will happen if I then remove the "google account" which I don't want in my device.
IIRC it is a cooldown to prevent less tech-savvy individuals from being tricked into installing malicious apps.
I don't think Google is doing this out of some egotistical obsession over "control," it's more that developers and FOSS enthusiasts are a vanishingly small fraction of their customer base.
There are plenty of problems with walled gardens, but IMO this isn't one of them.
As I understand they're being pressured into it by governments like the Brazilian government to prevent a widespread form of scam there, but of course they're happy to comply because it means they have more control as well
We'd all be safest in a cage but no one wants to live like that
I doubt they care about the Brazilian government. They're not going to lose customers there, the only alternative is iPhones and those are completely unaffordable in Brazil due to their local manufacturing laws. Only the rich few can afford one. They cost about twice as much as anywhere else and this is in a country where people have much less money.
So sanctioning Google means taking the smartphone away from 95% of their population. Which isn't going to happen.
> I don't think Google is doing this out of some egotistical obsession over "control," it's more that developers and FOSS enthusiasts are a vanishingly small fraction of their customer base.
It's also that that fraction is one they don't get any income from. We don't use Google accounts, Google apps or services etc.
So they don't get to track us as much except the few things you can't turn off in play services. Not everyone can work with custom rom (on those the new restriction obviously doesn't apply at all)
The worst problem with walled gardens is when everything is walled. Android is not supposed to be an "ecosystem", it is a damn OS on compatible hardware.
> It's more that developers and FOSS enthusiasts are a vanishingly small fraction of their customer base.
Maybe it's because direct installs are too hard to do already? Fortnite tried to go to that route and failed, if Fortnite couldn't make it who can?
And let's be real, I'm not going to accept any talk of "security" from Google when I type "chatgpt" in the search bar of the play store and I have an app with a counterfeit logo coming up at the top spot.
The stated intention is to discourage scams. Bur this is exactly the same way Xiaomi makes their devices "unlockable" and in reality they just turned off their unlock server years ago and the button doesn't do anything, so you can't unlock.
Not quite. When the update is pushed, there will be an initial 24 hour waiting period to unlock your device. And then you can install unsigned APKs from hobbyist devs or Fdroid as before
I am being completely honest here - what is the reason that the government id thing is a problem here? And why is attesting the private key (evidence that you have it) an issue?
I get the rest but I can’t get my head around people who find these two things upsetting.
IMHO, this is a great time to push PWAs even harder. I know they're not a fit for every use case, but most of the apps I saw and/or use would work just fine as PWAs. If Mozilla wants to do the right thing this time, they could reconsider bringing first-class PWA support back across all platforms.
I typically tell them I don't have an Apple or Google play store. That typically confuses them enough that I can avoid explaining more than just telling them that that is indeed possible.
Although many people do say that there's an issue with banking apps on GrapheneOS, I don't believe that's actually the case. Many banking apps work just fine. In cases where other apps refuse to run, GrapheneOS has compatibility toggles. After toggling those on, many banking apps that complain start working again.
In other cases, banks add Play Integrity checks to their apps, which is a more complex subject. In short, many banking apps check for the basic integrity verdict, which GrapheneOS can get. In other cases, the checks are not implemented properly, and GrapheneOS has a toggle which often gets those apps to work. Finally, a very small number of banking apps require the strong integrity verdict and the apps will refuse to run on GrapheneOS.
Although there are no statistics about this, it does seem that a majority of banking apps work or can be made to work with different compatibility toggles.
It's not a banking app, but there are definitely apps that don't work on GrapheneOS that can't be made to work. A friend of mine is "required" to use Microsoft Authenticator for his work MFA, which won't run. He's looking at having to carry another phone.
I have to use the awful thing, too, so if I go to GrapheneOS next year when, hopefully, a non-Google phone supports it, I'll have to carry two phones. Ugh.
Every moat, every walled garden, every infrastructure piece can be rebuilt with AI.
We're seeing it with desktop apps, with games. It will happen to infrastructure and platforms. I'm itching at the opportunity to build open cloud primitives and P2P social protocols.
We don't need big tech anymore. We just need to be able to run our models.
I want to see every *aaS’s functionality required to be offered -on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms- as an API
Who is Ford to tell me I can’t have a widget for each of my ford EVs visible at the same time? Or even that the single-car widget they do allow has has to be four times bigger than I want it to be, and waste screen real estate on dead space and things that I don’t want?
Not at all. The app that is enforcing the change is a privileged Google app. Even if someone tried installing it on GrapheneOS, it wouldn't be able to do anything like remove apps, block installation, or disable apps.
And my experience has been that it's frequently harder to sidestep Google's bullshit on GrapheneOS because you don't have as much control of your phone, in the interest of security.
Honestly at this point, I'm just gonna start transitioning to Ubuntu Touch. The Android experiment has run its course.
What you're saying doesn't make any sense. I literally just said that GrapheneOS isn't affected.
The narrative that GrapheneOS is so focused on security that it affects usability, especially given the context, is nonsense. The change that's being discussed here doesn't affect GrapheneOS or other non-GMS operating systems. The only affected OSes are the ones that install Google apps with privileged permissions.
If you want to switch to something else, go ahead. GrapheneOS is still a better overall choice.
That is not the case. It is significantly easier to the point it is entirely optional. GrapheneOSs privacy and security features do not make avoiding google more difficult.
On stock OSs, google signs major portions of the OS and is highly privileged, which is impossible to sidestep.
Not to mention, one of the most important things, the absolute best app out there for controlling insulin pumps for diabetics is an open source app you have to "sideload." I'm not usually one to make hyperbolic accusations, but in this case Google attempting to kill sideloading could put real people's lives in danger, or substantially damage their quality of life.
Removing freedom, and control will never get rid of scammers. Nor will it get rid of the plethora of poorly written corporate owned apps that will still be allowed to fester. It won't even get rid of the apps that scammers use to scam.
At best it gets rid of some scams, certainly not most of them or poorly written apps, which continue to flood the Google PlayStore.
Despite Google's best efforts to automatically ban malicious developers, catching many legitimate developers in the crossfire, their store isn't exactly a bastion of quality or scam-free.
> Despite Google's best efforts to automatically ban malicious developers, catching many legitimate developers in the crossfire, their store isn't exactly a bastion of quality or scam-free.
I honestly doubt their "best efforts".
Fact of life is they make money off apps including malicious ones. For the same reason a lot of promoted content on Google search is clickbait and they even serve malicious apps. Money corrupts.
and installing AI-monitored CCTV that calls the cops when it thinks you're up to no good in every room of every dwelling would reduce the number of murders and rapes by at least half.
I'm sure you will not object when that happens. you are not a murderer or rapist, are you?
I wouldn't, as long as humans aren't viewing it, think of the murders/abuse prevented, it could even monitor your behaviour and be like a pre-cog so if it thinks you sound weird or creepy it sends a robot round to question/arrest you.
24/7 omnipresent behavioral monitoring by an uncompromising algorithm, its hand always hovering over the button that ruins my life? Hell yeah sign me up!
I hope this isn't satire, because it's hilarious how often when someone logically extends the arguments of the authoritarian corporate tech overlords until they turn into a direct retelling of dystopian nightmares from the past, someone pops up and goes "Yes that is my dream world, I would like that please"
Obviously this does not affect “every device worldwide”. I don’t have a single Android phone, and the devices I own that do run Android are not affected.
there are plenty of android devices without google apps, I was running many of them in the last 10 years, my current phone is after long time still with enabled gapps, though no google account, I have zero problem to stop using gapps
This sort of breathless outrage rhetoric would be a lot easier to take seriously if it spent even a minute acknowledging the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate: tech support scams where people are walked through installing an app that takes over their phone and steals their money, private data, and identity.
You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
Personally, I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise to allow user freedom while slowing down attackers sufficiently to mitigate the harm.
Tech is cool, but it's not an end in itself. Serving people should be. And if people are getting hurt, it's not working well, even if those people are not the ones that read Hacker News.
I don't think you can just do anything you want in the name of security and protecting users. This will make installing apps needlesly difficult. There is already a warning when enabling installation of apps from unknown sources. That should be enough. If users don't read that's on them.
The real problem here is not that Google is doing this bad thing. The real problem is that they can do this bad thing. They shouldn't have this power. Something needs to be done to rain in Google and take back Android as an open platform.
Nobody reads warnings or errors. StackOverflow is full of questions where someone pastes a clear error message and asks what they have to do when the very error message tells them the solution.
Also, scammers just tell people to ignore warnings and they do it. If someone is able to convince you that your child is in danger and that you have to bypass all warnings to help them, you _will_ do it.
Users don’t read warnings. Most scams capitalise on urgency. When given more time to stop and think something through, it often becomes obvious what’s happening.
Courts make you liable for results, not intentions, like the way Quad9 is now an illegal piracy operation in France because it doesn't block pirate sites.
First, courts do hold manufacturers responsible for manufacturing or design defects.
Then, generally, "software is just a tool like a knife" doesn't hold because software today is more a service than a tangible good. Companies continue to update the programs and things can happen in the cloud with limited user control.
If you had a big corpo being affected by every knife murder, you'd be sure that they would be liable. Since murders usually "only" affect an individual nothing is being done
There is a very real usability issue that has to analysed when developing high risk products, and that's popup fatigue.
A huge number of people just click accept to any popup they get because they're so fed up with seeing them. It's something that is often analysed in design of medical products
I experienced this problem in semiconductor manufacturing.
It was really difficult to explain to Korea that the additional warnings they wanted me to put in front of the tool operators were actually causing more harm than good. The cultural divide made this really difficult to approach.
"What do you mean the American mfg staff don't actually read everything?!"
"Yeah... Especially at the ATX line. We kind of go off vague shapes around here"
You understand then that there is absolutely no possible fix for that right?
If your grandma will follow current instructions, she will follow these new instructions including a 24 hour wait.
Your grandma will follow instructions to walk down to walgreens and buy a brand new device if they tell her. The solution has nothing to do with the device and everything to do with you needing to be an adult and figure out how to get your grandma to not follow directions of scammers.
This isn't a tech problem and you cannot solve it with tech.
This is not true. Scams rely on continuous urgency and want the entire process completed without you ever hanging up the phone, and cooling-off periods routinely break the illusion.
> That should be enough. If users don't read that's on them.
The phone scammers who are saying the FBI/NSA/IRS will arrest you unless you install sketchy remote access software or other malware are rather convincing to a certain demographic of people and no amount of text on the screen will stop that. It all comes down to whether or not you view the tradeoff being that vulnerable people are worth protecting with this measure worldwide or not.
Should Google be less than an asshole in all things? Yes.
I think there’s this like “something must be done now!” attitude of self-important, busybodies I can’t get behind… even if they’re right.
Why have people convinced themselves into thinking now is the most important thing in the world? That if it doesn’t happen now so that it makes me happy instantly it isn’t an option?
Evolution; social, tech, biological, legal, just fucking takes time, and that’s a feature.
There will be a period in which there’s a ton of food over there but your little fishy fins can’t get to it, and that sucks, but deal with it yourself, or just chill and let things happen. I promise if it’s important someone will solve it eventually and the scales do not need to be tipped for every little thing like phone app permissiveness.
In the meantime, you are free to not buy an android phone if you don’t like the system that Google has produced. You seem to think that because you can see its insides that it is collectively owned. It isn’t. Google owns it. Talk of talking it from its owners, is theft. In this case, justified entirely because you don’t like a process they decided on.
Don’t make me defend Google, I fucking hate Google.
I have huge incentives to have a phone. It means Android or Apple. not exactly a flourishing free market of choices. Banks, the government, places I want to go to all either force me to use an app, or create costs in money and time if I want to avoid using one.
>You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
There is a third position beside "I agree/disagree with the tradeoff", which is "I don't consider the tradeoff as stated truthful and refuse to frame the conversation that way".
Every closing of rights comes with a legitimate-sounding reason. Protect the children, etc. Most activist have been through this process enough times to see the play coming a mile away.
It is also surprising to see, on a place called hacker news, people defending closed systems and removal of agency from end users by giant corporations.
> There is a third position beside "I agree/disagree with the tradeoff", which is "I don't consider the tradeoff as stated truthful and refuse to frame the conversation that way".
Thank you. When you see it once, it becomes so obvious everywhere else. Every single time it's just assertions without hard statistics, always perpetrated by the side that also happens to profit from it or accomplishes something else they really want to do. I'm not going to deny that the number of people who get scammed through sideloading isn't zero, but I don't have to accept as unwritten fact that these lockdowns are actually about that, or that this number of people is significant at all compared to everyone who just wants to install off-Google Play apps, like what Google implied and almost everyone here just accepted.
> It is also surprising to see, on a place called hacker news, people defending closed systems and removal of agency from end users by giant corporations.
The suddenness of the shift is shocking. One of my most popular comments, from no more than several months ago, was about this very topic. It was about the way Google will, like all other corporations, slowly ratchet up their 'measures' until there's no way left but their way. I basically just retold that comment here with very few real changes, and it's already greyed out at the near bottom of the thread. But the shift itself isn't unexpected. Lots of people here aren't the customizer, tinkerer, off the beaten path kind of 'hacker', but the tech enthusiast kind. Lots have direct links to Silicon Valley and the tech overlords of today. As the tech industry consumes everything else in the world, their rhetoric shifts from "Look at all these things we'll let you do!" to "We own you", so does the average sentiment of the users.
Many scams are committed thru apps like AnyDesk, TeamViewer, RustDesk...
That are apps already in the store. That is a very cheap, easy, proven way of doing it.
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt is a propaganda technique that tech companies have used for long against open source and competitors. The propaganda is to pretend that a 24 hour cooldown and making it difficult to install externals apps is for the good of the user meanwhile stealing their data and giving it to anybody that pays for it.
People are getting hurt. Mass spying should stop now.
Or even Whatsapp, which people already have installed on their phone. No need to go to the store to install anything.
A scammer managed to convince a relative to share their screen during a Whatsapp video call. Luckly, said relative didn't use banking apps on the phone, the bank rejected as suspicious the transaction on the computer which would have sent money to the scammer, and the relative asked me for help before going to the ATM to unblock the account (I then contacted the bank and had them fully block the account as a precaution, and told my relative to go to the bank branch the next day to change the passwords and unblock the account).
Phone carriers can't be bothered to police their networks to mitigate flagrant bad actors, who can't be shut down by state law enforcement, so your software company needs to take control of your device away from you. "For your own safety."
It's just a public confession that none of these organizations - not the carriers, not the government, and not Evil Google, are fit for the responsibilities they've claimed.
Huh? You’re arguing for carriers to inspect all traffic to block scammers? That’s way more intrusive than google blocking sideloading. The outrage on places like HN would be deafening.
After researching this for some time, the majority of scams are perpetrated with apps that are already in the Play Store and are remote access apps. The entire premise that the Play Store is safe and everything else is dangerous is not borne out by the empirical evidence.
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
I would turn this right around and say that until the proponents of this measure acknowledge that the Play Store is not safe and is in fact a primary vector for scams, you're just doing propaganda.
I’m all for trying to stop those who are getting harmed from being harmed, but at what point do we acknowledge the ignorance of those people? Installing random apps, provenance truly unknown, to your phone is a bad idea because of the security risk in doing so. I’d have the same advice for someone operating a windows PC. Don’t be downloading and installing random .exe to your environment, you’re gonna have a bad time. The former seems to be this mysterious new idea, unable to comprehend. Most people seem to know the latter and you get flamed for admitting “I installed this random .exe recommended to me by this dude on the phone who said he’s helping me.”
People gotta learn. Sometimes the best teacher is pain and suffering. I wish that weren’t true, but in my time on this planet, there has never been more truth to “you can lead a horse to water, but you certainly can’t make it drink it.”
Trying to save people against their will just doesn’t seem the best path. I’d rather more effort be put into education on best practices, or investment in an app sniffer that can try and identify common attack vectors. Idk, anything other than “some people are too stupid for their own good, so now we all have less freedom.” I mean truly, if you’re worried about grandma’s phone safety, only let her buy an iPhone. No android for mi-ma.
All I see here is Google snatching at the opportunity to get some of that scrumptious walled garden money.
The topic has been discussed multiple times, and propaganda really feels like not acknowledging past discussions. You might not have seen past discussions so I'll give you a pass and restate my argument.
One important way that scams reach end users are through the willing participation of ad platforms, and even before DSA (not that much has changed) people (myself included) have done countless reports of straight up scam ads with no recourse and a templated "we have found nothing wrong with the ad".
As a data point, have you not seen the Tai Chi AI ads on YouTube that will "make you a different person by the end of the week" which where run by a company that sold you a subscription via dark patterns with all the surprises that brings (like a big headache of an unsubscribe process).
Or the fact that Meta knows that X% of it's ads are scam/phising and do nothing about it because it hurts the bottomline (an AI chat will help you with references).
The hypocrisy is too much coming from Google since they are owners of the machine that feed scams right to your doorstep.
And let's not ignore all the other fronts they are fighting on to further lock down the Android platform (such as not making source available immediately and moving more of the runtime in their play services and platform integrity nonsense).
I'm somebody who likes lifting weights. I often lift weights heavy enough that, if done improperly, could harm me greatly and grossly.
There are people at my gym who often have very bad form who I worry about. I will occasionally chat them up so they're not, for example, shoulder pressing with their arms outside of the scapular plane [0] or benching without any arch in their back [1]. Sometimes they appreciate it and ask me more questions. Sometimes they give me a terse 'thanks' and go back to doing it the way they want to do it.
If somehow every gym started forbidding people from using any equipment with which they could harm themselves unless they could prove, with a 24h cooling off period, that they knew the form and dangers in detail, I'm sure it would probably save a few people from suffering temporary injuries. I think it would also drive a lot of people away from any kind of sustained resistance training and be an overall net negative for public health.
Personally, I don't think such a nanny-state implementation is necessary? That you should be able to easily toggle off such a feature if you like and what happens to you happens. Perhaps there should be a 'tech-illiterate' mode toggled on by default but easily toggled off if you know how to access Developer Options with a little more forewarning about common scams. Perhaps gyms (or Google) could pay people to proactively assist and help people they see as the most vulnerable to certain kinds of exploits. Perhaps instead of spending time training Gemini to be a general-assist LLM they could train a very small local model to hyperspecifically guard against known intrusions.
There are so many more pro-social, less-draconian ways of tackling safety issues, from socialization to ongoing support to education efforts. A lockdown that just happens to also help ensure that they can extract their pound of flesh inside the abattoir that is Google Play seems at best overly protective and at worst just more corporate extraction of surplus value from individuals.
> the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate:
The risk of people cutting themselves is not a responsibility nor a concern for the knife manufacturers. I would be very upset if one day all kitchen knives would be sold blunt just to mitigate some clueless people from cutting their fingers off.
Similarly, I seriously and absolutely don't get it why people falling for scams should be a reason to require KYC to distribute apps.
Especially given that KYC-passed accounts are easily obtainable online for pennies.
Uh it absolutely is a concern and a responsibility . Different knives are made the way they are precisely to avoid people cutting themselves accidentally during various kinds of cutting motions. Additionally blunt knives are significantly more dangerous than sharp ones which is why they don't ship blunt ones.
Maybe before trying to go off half assed exactly like this outrage website does, you should take 5 minutes to be bothered to see if what you are saying is even mildly correct. Even five seconds of searching would tell you pretty much everything you wrote is wrong.
Lots of things are compromises intended to serve multiple goals rather than just drive one particular goal to the extreme. In that sense knives are exactly like what is happening here. You may not like that. But it is at least accurate, unlike what you wrote
These scams regularly go on for days anyway. Now the scammer just gets them to install it and says "we'll call you back tomorrow to finish getting rid of the viruses"
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
I would argue pretending like this is actually for anyone's security is propaganda hiding the fact that this is all for Google to tighten its grip on Android.
> Personally, I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise to allow user freedom while slowing down attackers sufficiently to mitigate the harm.
The best solution would have been to be able to mark ANY alternative app store like fdroid as trusted and no such cooldown period would hit every time people install an app from there. This avoids that people can immediately use installed apps downloaded from an arbitrary URL but at the same time keeps the alternative app stores as a good alternative. Google decided to play unfair again.
Oh, ok, thanks for the information. But if it is a one-time, device-level wait, not per source and not per app, then I'm unsure how this should prevent scammers in the long term?
I'm pretty convinced it is just Google testing boiling the water steady and slowly :)
Scammers often create a sense of urgency/emergency, especially over the phone, and putting a 24hr limit on it gives the person more time to possibly realize they're getting scammed.
It's not 100% perfect, but it helps reduce scams. And with AI, scams are probably going to get more frequent and harder to realize it's a scam.
If you know you want your phone unlocked, just start the process as soon as you get your phone, and then it's yours. It's like an extra day of shipping.
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Edit: Google explains this more:
In these scenarios, scammers exploit fear – using threats of financial ruin, legal trouble, or harm to a loved one – to create a sense of extreme urgency. They stay on the phone with victims, coaching them to bypass security warnings and disable security settings before the victim has a chance to think or seek help.
According to a 2025 report from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), 57% of surveyed adults experienced a scam in the past year, resulting in a global consumer loss of $442 billion.
When I was still on android, I installed F-Droid to avoid the google app store entirely, since the google app store's vetting is -uh- not very good.
The correct move is to remove the (icon for) the google app store from inexperienced user's phones. (I'm dead serious, and it works)
Unfortunately, that's exactly the move that now gets sabotaged by this google change.
So sure I'll acknowledge the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate. It does in fact marginally mitigate the precise narrow risk they state, but introduces a fatal flaw in its place. Probably unwise to let naive users use android at all anymore after this.
> This sort of breathless outrage rhetoric would be a lot easier to take seriously if it spent even a minute acknowledging the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate: tech support scams where people are walked through installing an app that takes over their phone and steals their money, private data, and identity.
1. Is requiring developers to submit government ID actually an effective way to prevent tech support scams? Will scammers actually be deterred by a government ID requirement in addition to the existing developer registration process?
2. Is requiring developers to submit government ID the best option to prevent tech support scams? Are there other options that Google could use to make Android user less susceptible to tech support scams?
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
The tradeoff, such as it is, is acknowledged on keepandroidopen.org under the "But wait, isn't this...just about security?" section:
> The security rationale is a smokescreen. Google Play Protect already scans for malware independent of developer identity. Requiring a government ID doesn't make code safer.
Finally:
> Personally, I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise to allow user freedom while slowing down attackers sufficiently to mitigate the harm.
I don't think this is an excellent compromise. Scammers are persistent. I'm not convinced a 24 hour cooldown is enough to deter them in any meaningful way. I, on the other hand, am not persistent enough to wait 24 hours to install an Android app from F-Droid just to try it out.
Google, who gladly take the money from criminals in exchange for funneling victims to their scam websites have the moral high ground and are unfortunately forced to take away the user's freedoms?
Look at the incentives. Google makes money from scam ads. Most ads I see online are scams of some sort. If Google completely blocked scams, they might not be in business.
Yes I understand that Google says they care a lot about scams and that there are people there working on blocking scams. But those are words. We need to look at money.
There is a very simple way that Google can block basically all scam ads: review all ads manually before approval, and allow no dynamic changes. They won’t do this, because it would implode their business model.
Look at the incentives. Google makes money from ads. Bad ads cause users to distrust Google ads, causing those users to be less valuable, causing advertisers to spend less with Google.
The goal is maintaining a continuous stream of revenue, not killing the stream for short term gains.
Advertisers don’t care about what other ads are doing, why would they?
Google not only benefits from scam ads, they innovated the entire scam ad economy. Prior to the proliferation of automated online ad services, ads on TV, print media et al were carefully reviewed. There were very little scams.
Naturally such a business has a scaling cap. Online websites would collaborate with advertisers directly, and there were little to no scams. Then Google and others entered the picture and innovated automatic ads with virtually no human verification. After that, we saw an entire online scam ad economy explode.
It’s not just that Google doesn’t care enough about scam ads. They created scam ads, it’s their bread and butter. Not just Google either, we see the same thing with meta on their platforms. The scams will not go away.
That is a real concern, but I don’t for a minute believe that it’s Google’s only motivation. This is also securing a revenue stream and making it harder for others to compete.
Full disclosure, I am an iPhone user in part because I personally like living in the walled garden. But I also acknowledge that it has its downsides. I have a separate Android device just for language learning because the open source language learning app ecosystem is basically nonexistent on Apple’s locked-down platform. I’m not thrilled about the possibility of that ecosystem withering and dying on Android, too.
So Google is going to tackle scams on youtube too right? Because they care so much about the poor scam victims, and this has nothing to do with establishing overarching control.
Why do we keep having to sacrifice our freedom for the fake safety of the ignorant and their continued freedom to be ignorant?
Why do we have to be lectured on how important this change is for their safety, while the Play store continues to be the primary location scam apps come from?
When do the companies get to be the ones that have to give up their own freedoms in favor of everyone else's safety?
I'm fine with this as long as F-Droid and other stores are treated equally.
If I have to wait 24h to install an app from another store, I demand the same to apply to AppStore. I see app stores just like browsers: users must have the ability to choose which browser they want when installing an operating system, and for Android, users must be able to select which app store they want and they should work the same way.
> I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise
I don't. An hour would make the same point and provide the same level of protection. So would clicking through a few screens with very simple and easy to understand warning messages about the risk of scams. Sure, it's a compromise, but it's pretty much the opposite of excellent.
A scammer would stay on the phone for an hour so they don't talk to anyone else about it. A few screens would be ignored.
24 hours might not be enough, and there is a risk that a scammer gets a user to go into developer mode and then calls back a few days later to try and 'fix the issue' or something. At least in 24 hours the victim might talk to someone about it and then find they're being scammed.
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
I strongly agree with this statement.
If a piece of public communication is intended to sway the reader's opinion without informing them (or while selectively informing them, which is close to the same thing), it is propaganda.
If that's really what it is, Google should put their money where their mouth is. I'd be ok with this change if you had to go through all the same hoops to install apps through the Play store.
There is already many warnings and if the can get you to do that they can get you to other types of scams rather don't require installing an app like sharing data, putting info on websites.
Filippo, I'm rather surprised and disappointed to see this come from you. I'd much rather see Google working on preventing abuse of apps already installable via the Play Store, instead of imposing restrictions on those who do not want to use their store to begin with.
I don't mind warnings and even brief cool downs but 24 hours is ridiculous.
If I lose or break my phone, I have to wait 24 hours after acquiring my new phone to use the apps I previously used? It's just absurd.
If I had to explain to clients that I was unable to do work until tomorrow, I'd be ridiculed.
I am certain that its not about harm but rather US supremacy doctrine. They are tightening their noose. You have to be approved to live in their digital world and pay rent.
Yup.. thats what I think.. little steps towards monopoly worldwide. How did the current admin came about? why are these lakes of gulfs are being named America-yada-yada then and the private corps had the legal rights not to do it. Who do you think backs them up to collect rent worldwide and appose any regulation that reduces their hold? They want access and full control; that's whats about.
I remind you that Ai can reverse compile and find viruses and crap and they could have tested multiple gazillion apps simultaneously even before Ai.
Being naive is one thing and that is fine but trying to advocate naivety is something else.
In my opinion, its about collecting new money and forced compliance worldwide to collect more and more. Every software company wants to collect rent from around world and that is why they are tightening their noose once their they know that they have some form of monopoly. It is not just mere accident in universe.
Sorry, I get where your emotions are coming from with this, but it is just technically wrong on every level.
The vast majority of tech support scams come through apps on the Play Store. Not only that, but malicious apps get approved on the Play Store constantly.
There is no reason to take any claim that this change is meant to mitigate scams seriously, because there's no evidence to support that it makes a noticeable dent in such activity.
What this change does noticeably and impactfully do, is prevent, via chilling effects, users from being able to use their phones in ways that could lose Google and its partner vendors post-sales revenue.
As you said, serving people should be the end in itself, and this change doesn't do that - it hurts people.
It's like locking people out of their own home, and then when people express outrage the concern troll steps in from out of frame to point out that they're not acknowledging the very real risk that if they could access their own house gasp they might accidentally let the wrong person in, or break something, or whatever.
Googler propaganda. Huge majority of scams is through play store apps and AdMob ads. Google doesn't care about scams, they care about control and sucking up money.
It's exactly the same as the people crying conspiracy about parts-locking for repairability, not acknowledging the real effects it had on phone thefts and the pressure at the national and governmental level to help solve the epidemic.
2) don't put it on a timer. What's most damning, in my opinion, is that this is the very definition of a bait-and-switch. Any rational person thinks this won't apply to their existing phone because it came before the rollout, right? It's only android 15 and onward? No. That's wrong, it'll apply to YOUR phone. Google. Non-Google. Doesn't matter. Android 12, 13, 14? Nope applies to them all. That's just an accident then?
This is nothing but a business decision to extort money from developers and you know it. It's anti-competitive at its core, locking out other, more reliable app stores and taking control of an open source operating system. It's just one more measure in a long trend of fulfilling the wet dreams of large tech, namely killing personal computing and controlling everything people can do with devices they've bought.
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
The propaganda I'm seeing is coming from Google. I can't tell you how many times lately I've seen ads on TV/streaming pushing the security narrative for Play Store. Google knows what it is doing is blatantly anti-consumer and they very much want public sentiment to think it's not.
There will always be means to scam individuals through technology. Pulling stunts like this is not justified simply because it closes off one means of doing so.
This sounds like know-it-all propaganda as well. Why not make it opt-in? Google (and other Big Tech companies) seem to think they know better than everyone else, even though they are also completely untransparent about what they do.
IMO a more precise framing is that what is being removed is the ability of anonymous developers to have wide distribution on Android devices. That is, after these changes, you (as an app developer) can either:
- be a registered developer, and target all Android users (Google Play Store, F-Droid, distributing .apk files, etc), or
- remain anonymous, and target only a subset of Android users (all "power users" who do the one-time 24-hour cooldown, or a small number of users if you use the student/hobbyist path, and of course anyone can install their own apps on their own device with adb).
No, no it is not. If Google didn't love these changes, they'd do what Apple does with the EU. Malicious compliance, or at worst, only complying there. The LLM providers do the same.
Google loves, wants, and has instigated these changes. They are not being rolled out because some governments are asking for them. Those governments would never have specifically asked for these measures anyway; they'd have asked "can you reduce these scams?". And if Google had wanted to act on this, they wouldn't have done this either because they know that the overwhelming majority of these scams are from Play Store apps or from ads, often through AdMob itself, never passing through non-store apps. Those are a sliver of scams.
That's fair; there is some slight evidence in the linked comments of pressure from those governments, but you're right, Google's own comments show it agreeing with the principle. E.g. they say that identifying and banning malicious apps isn't very effective if the developers can make slight changes and distribute modified apps immediately. So the basic idea of anonymous apps having wide distribution is what is being targeted.
I guess the an alternative open unix based operating system that can upload existing apps from both android as well as apple is needed or the greed will not ever end. This is about corporations that constantly need growth using new ways to collect rent from the rest of the world. They are chocking the world to collect new monies.
They are recommending installing F-droid.. and not accepting android's demands. Its time to have open source smart phone operating system that can not be taken hostage.
The problem is that these OSes have achieved regulatory lock-in. Your bank app won't work on an alternative OS because it's not trusted. In some countries that means you can't access online government services through the standard path either.
This is just the beginning. Whine much as you (we) like, Google was absolutely prepared for our complaints and pushback when they made this decision. And no amount of our feedback changed their path.
Thus, we should absolutely expect next steps for Android to slowly go into walled garden mode: no dev unlocking for certain devices, dev unlock after mandatory KYC, etc, etc.
Just to highlight as this often gets misreported when this is raised.
You will still be able to install unsigned APKs, but the first-time procedure to unlock the ability will include a 24 hour wait. After that, unsigned APKs can still be installed as usual
And APKs outside of the Play store can still be distributed unsigned, subject to the 24 hour wait for Play Protect devices
Honestly, I'm less concerned with the initial wait and more concerned about how this is run entirely through Google Play Services, leaving Google with the ability to alter the deal next time they have another benevolent security decree.
I moved to Android in 2022 from the iPhone ecosystem. I've been thru one phone replacement cycle and it was glorious. I got by without ever using Google Play and never had to tie my phone to any "ecosystem".
I had "sideloaded" all the APKs for the software I used on the old phone and saved the APKs. Moving to a new phone was just a matter of loading all the software and copying my rsync'd backups onto the new phone. It was wonderful. Just like moving to a new PC.
I guess I'm happy I got to have this experience for a little while.
Edit: I've found a few apps I can't used because they require Play attestation. Eventually I'll hit one of those that I need and I'll be at an impasse irrespective of this particular power grab.
Note that GrapheneOS won't be supported on current Motorola phones. Only the yet to be released models with the new Snapdragon flagship SoC like the Signature 27 will be supported. Others, don't meet the requirements.
Good catch. I wouldn't want people to get that impression. My reference to being a current Motorola Customer was a statement about liking their build quality (and their not being Google).
I am using a Pixel 7 now, bought specifically to ensure I can run Graphene, but there is a high likelihood I will be getting a Moto phone for my next one!
It took about 2 years. April 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin [0].
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers... we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm."
The thing that this enables are governments locking down apps used for protesting, e.g. Indian government petitioned to take down the „BitChat“ app by Jack Dorsey, as it was (successfully) used to circumvent the mobile carrier shutdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitChat#Usage
Not trying to go to bat for Google here, but this smells to me like them trying to abide by Know Your Customer regulation.
I don't love it either, but "why doesn't Google just ignore that regulation?" doesn't seem viable. (Companies only ignore laws when it's profitable, of course.)
Google started that push some time ago [0], this is a different policy. How does that require preventing the installation of unknown-to-Google apps on devices that belong to unknown-to-Google users?
And how is a 24-hour wwaiting period related to KYC, when it doesn't require a user to pass an ID check?
A 24-hour wait (or "cooldown period") prior to installing the F-Doid app doesn't require an ID check, just patience and the (IMO delusional) belief that Google will never tighten up that workaround. You might have to expand on how this is in any way related to KYC
To echo other comments, it would be really good if posts on this subject were more complete about the details of what's happening if for no other reason thаn it's difficult to understand the situation without those details. I'm pretty anti-corporate but it's hard to be anti-corporate without a level, complete picture.
Concretely in my case, I read all the fdroid materials that were linked to from the fdroid pop-ups and they left me hanging, trying to understand what was actually happening. I finally looked it up, and what I found was a lot more clear and actionable than what was communicated by, for example, Fdroid. Obviously Google's motives are clear, but I had to work pretty hard to figure out what was going on.
This style of communication is what will will undo graphene and fdroid and all these other organizations because it's just not useful, professional or appealing.
What does GrapheneOS have to do with the post or the website? We didn't make the website nor did we help with its messaging. We agreed to be listed on the website, but we describe the changes differently when it comes up in our community spaces, when asked via email email, or otherwise.
Pretty dead for me when they don't support the messaging app I need (yeah yeah people should use open protocol blah blah, but pretty much everyone in my country use them and I won't be able to convert them), nor transport (regular cabs can easily cost twice), and last I heard they don't even support copy paste between apps.
There isn't even any high res large touch screen KaiOS phone. I want to watch HD movies and read articles in comfort without scrolling all the time.
I don't think users are as susceptible to scam as companies portray. I also think an hour of class at school will teach people enough. In fact, people grew up with Internet don't even seem to need that.
Nowadays it seems that there's dumbing down of everything. Don't let technology replace education and common sense.
I thought Google was adding more hoops to jump through for F-Droid, Termux and the like. Did that change? Obviously the more hoops the less happy we will be, but it'd be nice to know.
Keep in mind they’re crippling devices. You’ve already paid for, it’s not like I’m gonna go to the store tomorrow and buy a new phone with significantly reduced functionality. Instead Google is reducing the functionality I already paid for.
I'd just turn off my phone before midnight, boot it into fastboot and reflash lineage 2 days later, missing the window for them to push anything. No gapps btw.
The 24 hour waiting period is absolutely ridiculous. The article says to download alternative stores but I thought they too are impacted as it is the installation mechanic.
The waiting period is the best way to combat coercion. If I’m setting up a new phone, the setup already takes multiple hours that adding 24 hours doesn’t really mean much. It does a wonderful job of making sure you actually really want this app.
What about when you're not setting up a new phone? A waiting period doesn't combat coercion. Look at the people who have been kidnapped and held for days because the ATM has daily withdrawal limits.
The phone was never yours. You have a nice, granular set of permissions which (attempt to) control what apps can do ... but you don't really have any permissions that prevent you from _Google_ spying on you and selling your data or giving it up to law enforcement. It's like the propaganda radio you can turn down, but never off. You're given just enough control to feel like you have a choice.
Free install by ADB, and Developer-moding once per device, not once per app / install? Yeah, OK. I don't quite get the outrage, then.
Before you @ me, HN, I run GrapheneOS. I fully understand and practice "own your own hardware". Most people probably shouldn't, though, because they lack the technical ability / interest to do so safely, and throwing them to the wolves strikes me as ideology pushed to the point of foolishness.
People are more worried about the inevitable tightening of the noose that will happen from now on. 24 hour delay is just the start IMO. Eventually it will be adb only. Then adb but only valid for a week, like Apple...
We don't know that it's once per device. It's been said by Google that it'll be once per device, but we haven't seen the code and we don't know the method of tracking that. What if I wipe my OS? What if I wipe data in play services? Will a future silent play services update conveniently break my p2p messaging app during a protest?
You can still install unsigned APKs via ADB. Or you can install unsigned APKs following an initial 24 hour wait. Or you can install APKs on non-Play Protect devices
I've already said this, but here is roughly how this progression is going to go:
1. You own your device and can install anything you want on it (what we have today)
2. Google gently yanks you away from the simple workflows, leaving you with ADB or their 24 hour hoop to jump through. If you opt for the second, you get a choice between allowing 'unverified' installs for 7 days or indefinitely. Huh, that's weird, who would ever pick the 7 day option, right?
3. The dust settles and some time passes. Google decides that the indefinite option is just way too dangerous, the users are not safe if they are allowed to use this freedom. They'll just claim there's countless clueless grandmas getting entangled in multi-day-long scams that hinge on the sideloading feature, and they simply can't let them suffer so much. They will generously disable the 'indefinite' option.
4. 7 days may still be too much, maybe the sensible decision is to move to a 24 hour countdown per app. I mean, if you want it so badly, you have to work for it - that means you'll have more time to mull over the security of every single app you put on your phone.
5. Huh, for some reason it looks like almost no users are installing apps from outside Google Play anymore. We'll keep the feature on life support for a while, and then retire the legacy unverified installation workflow, to be replaced by a temporary limited permission for verified developers to briefly install their own in-development apps on their device. That ought to be enough.
This pathway for extinguishing features that are inconvenient for massive corporations isn't new. I really do not understand how everyone supporting Google's side here doesn't see this, and why they're so willing to wholeheartedly and without reservation believe them on matters of security where pushing one opinion also happens to conveniently align with their profit motive.
I hope that at step 4 this choice will still be as easy as it is today. When we get to that level of lockdown (which may take some years, but we'll get there), it's entirely plausible that Google will move to restrict bootloader unlocking on any phones that ship with Google services. It is 'more safe' after all. That will limit you to the niche of old or special de-Googled smartphones from small manufacturers, or maybe some Chinese market phones. All of this of course also comes with loads of their own anti-competitive kneecapping - you'll lose all attestation or 'integrity' features, so any feature or app that decided it was important enough will no longer work for you, which will probably be the vast majority of them by that point.
No matter what you do, it will never be as good as it once was. We've moved from a world where custom, 'hacker' type stuff could coexist with convenient apps and corporate or government services to a world where anything custom or unauthorized effectively doesn't exist, except for a few restrictive and mangled exceptions that require a lot of pain to get to and limit your device in many ways.
Google play store was ruled a monopoly and the Apple App store was not. Google allows alternatives on their platform and Apple strictly forbids it.
If the legal system dictates that open = monopoly and closed = fair game, then you get dumb shit like this.
Probably one of the dumbest rulings in tech ever, but few people know about it. Basically set precedent to never share your platform if you don't want legal scrutiny.
But I mean what are you saying really? An iPhone absolutely doesn't allow you to just randomly install stuff from the web unless there's been some update that I don't know about.
Or the adb escape hatch. IIRC, their adb equivalent is limited to having a small number of apps installed at the same time, needs each app to be periodically reinstalled at short intervals (IIRC, one week), and you need to have your expensive Apple laptop with you for that reinstall.
Even with Android becoming much more closed, it's still more open than Apple.
> Having a small number of apps installed at the same time, needs each app to be periodically reinstalled at short intervals (IIRC, one week), and you need to have your expensive Apple laptop with you for that reinstall.
Not true if one pays up ($99/yr), in which case the interval becomes one year. Also apps that sign and install other apps with one's cert exist.
I said for my family. I will likely still be buying android for myself, probably the grapheneos one if it comes out.
But for most people, the existing flow to allow external sources is already too much. For other people to install my APKs, while possible, is a slow and painful procese. Add waiting 24 hours? As good as blocked.
Regulation by 3rd parties. People use phones for payments and accessing sensitive services. But these apps work only on Android / iOS. There those who don't seek this use case, but there are rather small and increasingly shrinking minority. This is compounded by the knowhow needed to install non-stock OS on phone in the first place.
This is increasingly becoming the case. There have been a few posts on Reddit of people successfully porting Arch and other distros to phone hardware (typically seems to be OnePlus?). My handheld game console, a Snapdragon 8 Gen2-based Android device by Retroid, just got official first-party support for running Linux on it.
Will this affect Shizuku + InstallerX Revived? I mean worst case I will disable gapps or even better finally unlock my Xiaomi bootloader, in the last 15 years I've had unlocked bootloader (or at least root) on pretty much every single device, it was just too troublesome to unlock Xiaomi though there is already offline workaround so might as well do it finally.
For the defenders of Google's (and previously Apple's) behavior, I'd like to point out that if any of this was for the sake of security, developer ID certification would be left to an independent international organization and not be under company control. That would also clearly have legal advantages.
That's how it's done with domain names, with security advisories and disclosures, etc. That they don't do it for developers shows that it's about control and anti-competitive business behavior (preventing other app stores).
"Starting in 2027, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID."
Will not apply if updates are blocked
Good to have old phones, i.e., not primary phone, where user can block updates
Some users may want a portable, pocket-sized computer that the user can reasonably control (old phone) in addition to one controlled by Google or Apple (primary phone)
Maybe think of it like an "A/B test". Primary phone with the update and old phone without the update
For some users, the "threat model" may be Google and the long list of its government, corporate and other partners
Maybe some users just want relief from data collection, surveillance and ads
Not every user is the same
Some (not all) users may be willing to sacrifice some alleged "security" provided by an ad services company (wtf) in exchange for more _user control_
No "DNS trickery" is required to block this update but the user does need to control the phone's access to DNS, obviously. Users concerned about "keeping Android open" are probably doing this already
I have been blocking connections to Google servers, e.g., "updates", Google Play Services, and many, many others, on old phones for years. There are many ways to do it
For example, a local forward proxy works well; I run proxies on the phone and on the gateway
Blocking can also be done using only Android apps alone, e.g., Netguard, PCAPDroid
There are probably dozens of ways to block updates. It's not difficult
This will not arrive through Android updates but through Google Play Services.
You can try to block Play Services using DNS trickery, but it's like whackamole. The only way to be guaranteed safe from this update is to run a ROM without Google services installed.
In short, it doesn't affect you. Even if you tried installing the app that enforces the changes on GrapheneOS, it wouldn't have the necessary privileges to do anything.
Your app ecosystem might decrease as developers who don't want to register lose interest and the number of users supporting open source projects decreases.
> The EFF calls app gatekeeping "an ever-expanding pathway to internet censorship."
I think what's interesting, and what our grandchildren will look back on, was how naive the early internet was. There was almost this sense of "the government is powerless" whether it be piracy or jailbreaking or casual death threats [8647 style] or who knows what else. Combined with also a sense that devices will always be exploitable, there's always a way around, resistance from government and corporations will always be futile.
> Starting in 2027, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
Android is owned by Google, so in all fairness they can do whatever they want, so they don't need anyone consent.
This is not the problem it is presented to be, and I see more benefits to this than prejudice.
There is a very concerning amount of illegal apps/scams distributed through ads that I've casual users install somewhat banally with the aid of short walkthroughs.
Any sufficiently advanced user is barely affected by this, as the procedure is just complex enough to block average people from getting scammed/using illegal services unknowingly, but simple enough to barely be an inconvenience for anyone who cares enough and can go through it.
"This is barely an inconvenience, it's just a 9-step, 24h-long step through a proprietary service, and mandatory sign-up with governmental ID for the developers, everyone technical enough can easily bypass it"
I believe this is usually referred to as "boiling the frog".
it's not hard to imagine Google stating "we're removing this opt-out path because next to no-one uses it, and it will help streamline Android, which will protect the children!"
Starting in 2027, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.
This includes apps shared between friends, distributed through F-Droid, built by hobbyists for personal use.
Independent developers, church and community groups, and hobbyists alike will all be frozen out of being able to develop and distribute their software.
Registration requires:
- Paying a fee to Google - Agreeing to Google's Terms and Conditions - Surrendering your government-issued identification - Providing evidence of your private signing key - Listing all current and all future application identifiers
If a developer does not comply, their apps get silently blocked on every Android device worldwide.
I understand why you didn't mention it, but there is an opt-out: you enable developer mode and wait 24 hours.
As it runs through Google Play Services, it's pretty likely they'll boil the frog and make it even harder in the future. Moving to an open platform is a good idea.
I seem to recall some apps refusing to run if developer mode is enabled. A workaround that means I can no longer use the apps I use every day isn't much of a workaround.
Correct, some of the banking apps I use don't work unless I turn off Developer Mode It's actually annoying to have to turn on and off every time
Inevitably we're going to need a separate device for banking apps. Which makes sense until every single app bans developer mode...
The app my government pushes on everyone does not work with Developer Mode either.
Is it Developer mode those apps trip on or USB debugging? I've seen several examples of the latter but haven't come across the former yet. I run Google-free Android (14, 15, 16) devices which run the Swedish and Dutch banking and e-ID apps I use on, some of these only work when USB debugging is disabled while others don't care. Some of them complain about Google Play Services not being available but they run nevertheless, that warning is produced by some part of the SDK which gets imported at build time but it does not (yet...) disable anything.
You can likely disable developer mode after installing the app.
I’m not sure if you would have to re-enable it every time to sideload updates or new apps. You can also install via adb with no waiting period.
> You can also install via adb with no waiting period
Is this confirmed? If so, that largely removes my issue with the 24 hour waiting period for enabling/disabling dev mode.
The 24 hour waiting period is only once per account, not on every activation, or even every device.
Yes, this has been widely reported everywhere except for the scaremongering OP.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...
Adb also requires developer mode.
And my work doesn't permit it even with byod, it's so annoying. I've stopped running byod for that reason but now I'm stuck with two phones again.
Never byod. Besides MDM issues, it makes your personal device in scope for discovery if any lawsuit against the company.
If your device is under MDM it's already far more pwned than the topic of this article
Once enabled, it stays enabled even after developer mode is turned back off. It's also associated to the Google account (if any) so later device purchase don't have to wait the 24 hours period
This keeps getting missed out every time it's reported. I can't figure out whether people genuinely don't know, or they're trying to push a narrative that this is worse than it is
Firstly, TFA has a bright red banner describing the opt-out mechanism. It's probably the second most attention-grabbing element on the page, after the countdown. Secondly, initially Google didn't mention any plans for an opt-out at all[1]. That was was only ceded after pushback[2].
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260312134021/https://developer...
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260328133800/https://developer...
It's clearly stated and expanded upon in this reporting.
Because it's a workaround on Googles control. Next year it will be a week, then a month, then never again.
It's under google's control because it's a Play Protect feature. It doesn't exist on non Play Protect devices
You say, "Play Protect" as if it is a thing that users can choose to avoid. Or as if it justifies the behavior. I don't think either of those is true.
>non Play Protect devices
Such as...?
And then you find your banking app no longer works...
Then you switch banks
There are exactly three banks here that are worth using as a business and all of them have the same idiotic policy.
But I have Google Play Services disabled, since I couldn't uninstall it.
As I understand it, you yourself will also need a google account to unlock the setting to "sideload" in the hidden "developer options" before waiting 24 hours.
What I am not sure is what will happen if I then remove the "google account" which I don't want in my device.
A wait of 24hrs is not an opt out, it is a demonstration of absolute control.
IIRC it is a cooldown to prevent less tech-savvy individuals from being tricked into installing malicious apps.
I don't think Google is doing this out of some egotistical obsession over "control," it's more that developers and FOSS enthusiasts are a vanishingly small fraction of their customer base.
There are plenty of problems with walled gardens, but IMO this isn't one of them.
As I understand they're being pressured into it by governments like the Brazilian government to prevent a widespread form of scam there, but of course they're happy to comply because it means they have more control as well
We'd all be safest in a cage but no one wants to live like that
I doubt they care about the Brazilian government. They're not going to lose customers there, the only alternative is iPhones and those are completely unaffordable in Brazil due to their local manufacturing laws. Only the rich few can afford one. They cost about twice as much as anywhere else and this is in a country where people have much less money.
So sanctioning Google means taking the smartphone away from 95% of their population. Which isn't going to happen.
Google is doing this because Google wants to.
> I don't think Google is doing this out of some egotistical obsession over "control," it's more that developers and FOSS enthusiasts are a vanishingly small fraction of their customer base.
It's also that that fraction is one they don't get any income from. We don't use Google accounts, Google apps or services etc.
So they don't get to track us as much except the few things you can't turn off in play services. Not everyone can work with custom rom (on those the new restriction obviously doesn't apply at all)
The worst problem with walled gardens is when everything is walled. Android is not supposed to be an "ecosystem", it is a damn OS on compatible hardware.
> It's more that developers and FOSS enthusiasts are a vanishingly small fraction of their customer base.
Maybe it's because direct installs are too hard to do already? Fortnite tried to go to that route and failed, if Fortnite couldn't make it who can?
And let's be real, I'm not going to accept any talk of "security" from Google when I type "chatgpt" in the search bar of the play store and I have an app with a counterfeit logo coming up at the top spot.
Or might it be when a cron job runs?
Why do I need a remote cron job to install an app on my phone?
The stated intention is to discourage scams. Bur this is exactly the same way Xiaomi makes their devices "unlockable" and in reality they just turned off their unlock server years ago and the button doesn't do anything, so you can't unlock.
Because this entire movement has gone from being a noble cause to instead spreading FUD.
The amount of misinformation to scare people is alarming.
Not quite. When the update is pushed, there will be an initial 24 hour waiting period to unlock your device. And then you can install unsigned APKs from hobbyist devs or Fdroid as before
What happens to existing APKs and FDroid apps?
Can be installed as usual after the 24 hour wait, or via ADB without the wait
I am being completely honest here - what is the reason that the government id thing is a problem here? And why is attesting the private key (evidence that you have it) an issue?
I get the rest but I can’t get my head around people who find these two things upsetting.
I am doing by best to never give a tech company my government ID, and especially not to install apps i build myself on hardware that i own
IMHO, this is a great time to push PWAs even harder. I know they're not a fit for every use case, but most of the apps I saw and/or use would work just fine as PWAs. If Mozilla wants to do the right thing this time, they could reconsider bringing first-class PWA support back across all platforms.
Not that i make any difference but I'm very much committed to building everything as PWAs.
Good luck with that, the PWA standard is a moving goalpost with every Chrome update.
I haven't paid any fee to Google. Where does it say that you have to? Only Apple requires me to pay a (yearly) fee.
I believe that author is talking about a fee of 25$ you must pay to google when publishing your app in their ecosystem.
Is it safe to assume that GrapheneOS will not be affected by this?
GrapheneOS or other similar OS won’t be the issue.
The issue will be your bank, your gov, your uni, and school not releasing a compatible app for you.
And nowadays a device that cannot communicate or be trusted by other actors of the network (internet) is pretty much useless.
I hope those entities will wake up and start serving equivalents functionalities via the open web.
That is why we have the good old WWW for.
I already have to tell everyone I don't have a smartphone because stuff doesn't work so we'll on graphene and I don't want to explain.
I typically tell them I don't have an Apple or Google play store. That typically confuses them enough that I can avoid explaining more than just telling them that that is indeed possible.
Nearly everything works on GrapheneOS.
Although many people do say that there's an issue with banking apps on GrapheneOS, I don't believe that's actually the case. Many banking apps work just fine. In cases where other apps refuse to run, GrapheneOS has compatibility toggles. After toggling those on, many banking apps that complain start working again.
In other cases, banks add Play Integrity checks to their apps, which is a more complex subject. In short, many banking apps check for the basic integrity verdict, which GrapheneOS can get. In other cases, the checks are not implemented properly, and GrapheneOS has a toggle which often gets those apps to work. Finally, a very small number of banking apps require the strong integrity verdict and the apps will refuse to run on GrapheneOS.
Although there are no statistics about this, it does seem that a majority of banking apps work or can be made to work with different compatibility toggles.
It's not a banking app, but there are definitely apps that don't work on GrapheneOS that can't be made to work. A friend of mine is "required" to use Microsoft Authenticator for his work MFA, which won't run. He's looking at having to carry another phone.
I have to use the awful thing, too, so if I go to GrapheneOS next year when, hopefully, a non-Google phone supports it, I'll have to carry two phones. Ugh.
> That is why we have the good old WWW for.
We can use AI to take back the entire tech stack.
Every moat, every walled garden, every infrastructure piece can be rebuilt with AI.
We're seeing it with desktop apps, with games. It will happen to infrastructure and platforms. I'm itching at the opportunity to build open cloud primitives and P2P social protocols.
We don't need big tech anymore. We just need to be able to run our models.
Great for local stuff but won't help for remote services like banks when they rely on hardware attestation unfortunately.
I want to see every *aaS’s functionality required to be offered -on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms- as an API
Who is Ford to tell me I can’t have a widget for each of my ford EVs visible at the same time? Or even that the single-car widget they do allow has has to be four times bigger than I want it to be, and waste screen real estate on dead space and things that I don’t want?
the network (~~internet~~ Business interests)
Can you imagine of those "de-banking" people actually existed and could read?
Yes, because GrapheneOS completely controls app installation and google play services is just an optional module.
Not at all. The app that is enforcing the change is a privileged Google app. Even if someone tried installing it on GrapheneOS, it wouldn't be able to do anything like remove apps, block installation, or disable apps.
And my experience has been that it's frequently harder to sidestep Google's bullshit on GrapheneOS because you don't have as much control of your phone, in the interest of security.
Honestly at this point, I'm just gonna start transitioning to Ubuntu Touch. The Android experiment has run its course.
What you're saying doesn't make any sense. I literally just said that GrapheneOS isn't affected.
The narrative that GrapheneOS is so focused on security that it affects usability, especially given the context, is nonsense. The change that's being discussed here doesn't affect GrapheneOS or other non-GMS operating systems. The only affected OSes are the ones that install Google apps with privileged permissions.
If you want to switch to something else, go ahead. GrapheneOS is still a better overall choice.
That is not the case. It is significantly easier to the point it is entirely optional. GrapheneOSs privacy and security features do not make avoiding google more difficult.
On stock OSs, google signs major portions of the OS and is highly privileged, which is impossible to sidestep.
Optional is obviously easier than impossible.
But there literally is an opt-out. Users can disable this system if they want.
Will it block existing apps already installed on the phone?
Not to mention, one of the most important things, the absolute best app out there for controlling insulin pumps for diabetics is an open source app you have to "sideload." I'm not usually one to make hyperbolic accusations, but in this case Google attempting to kill sideloading could put real people's lives in danger, or substantially damage their quality of life.
So you hand over your passport at hotels, but here it is.. unacceptable?
I, at least, also consider it unacceptable at hotels... But that battle already seems lost.
Please don't use one loss of privacy to justify more.
Something, something, slippery slope.
Good, this will get rid of scammers, poorly written apps, and ten a penny vibe coded apps. They should have done it a while ago.
Removing freedom, and control will never get rid of scammers. Nor will it get rid of the plethora of poorly written corporate owned apps that will still be allowed to fester. It won't even get rid of the apps that scammers use to scam.
All of these are mainly distributed through the playstore actually so it won't change anything in that regards since google doesn't care.
At best it gets rid of some scams, certainly not most of them or poorly written apps, which continue to flood the Google PlayStore.
Despite Google's best efforts to automatically ban malicious developers, catching many legitimate developers in the crossfire, their store isn't exactly a bastion of quality or scam-free.
> Despite Google's best efforts to automatically ban malicious developers, catching many legitimate developers in the crossfire, their store isn't exactly a bastion of quality or scam-free.
I honestly doubt their "best efforts".
Fact of life is they make money off apps including malicious ones. For the same reason a lot of promoted content on Google search is clickbait and they even serve malicious apps. Money corrupts.
Because the Play Store has none of those?
and installing AI-monitored CCTV that calls the cops when it thinks you're up to no good in every room of every dwelling would reduce the number of murders and rapes by at least half.
I'm sure you will not object when that happens. you are not a murderer or rapist, are you?
I wouldn't, as long as humans aren't viewing it, think of the murders/abuse prevented, it could even monitor your behaviour and be like a pre-cog so if it thinks you sound weird or creepy it sends a robot round to question/arrest you.
24/7 omnipresent behavioral monitoring by an uncompromising algorithm, its hand always hovering over the button that ruins my life? Hell yeah sign me up!
I hope this isn't satire, because it's hilarious how often when someone logically extends the arguments of the authoritarian corporate tech overlords until they turn into a direct retelling of dystopian nightmares from the past, someone pops up and goes "Yes that is my dream world, I would like that please"
What is wrong with you
and reduce domestic violence and child abuse by even more. Funny no one thinks of the children when it comes to an idea like that.
Lmao
I can’t stand this sort of hyperbole.
Obviously this does not affect “every device worldwide”. I don’t have a single Android phone, and the devices I own that do run Android are not affected.
Clearly from context they meant every android device not every device.
there are plenty of android devices without google apps, I was running many of them in the last 10 years, my current phone is after long time still with enabled gapps, though no google account, I have zero problem to stop using gapps
It doesn't affect my air conditioner, my coffeemaker, or my slide rule! I'm really angry about this sort of rhetoric!
This sort of breathless outrage rhetoric would be a lot easier to take seriously if it spent even a minute acknowledging the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate: tech support scams where people are walked through installing an app that takes over their phone and steals their money, private data, and identity.
You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
Personally, I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise to allow user freedom while slowing down attackers sufficiently to mitigate the harm.
Tech is cool, but it's not an end in itself. Serving people should be. And if people are getting hurt, it's not working well, even if those people are not the ones that read Hacker News.
I don't think you can just do anything you want in the name of security and protecting users. This will make installing apps needlesly difficult. There is already a warning when enabling installation of apps from unknown sources. That should be enough. If users don't read that's on them.
The real problem here is not that Google is doing this bad thing. The real problem is that they can do this bad thing. They shouldn't have this power. Something needs to be done to rain in Google and take back Android as an open platform.
> If users don't read that's on them.
Nobody reads warnings or errors. StackOverflow is full of questions where someone pastes a clear error message and asks what they have to do when the very error message tells them the solution.
Also, scammers just tell people to ignore warnings and they do it. If someone is able to convince you that your child is in danger and that you have to bypass all warnings to help them, you _will_ do it.
Yeah, and Stack Overflow users are really angry that they don't do it, in other words, making their carelessness everyone else problem.
Users don’t read warnings. Most scams capitalise on urgency. When given more time to stop and think something through, it often becomes obvious what’s happening.
> Users don’t read warnings
Why should that be a concern to a phone OS provider? A concern so important that they are willing to cripple couple billions of devices.
Courts make you liable for results, not intentions, like the way Quad9 is now an illegal piracy operation in France because it doesn't block pirate sites.
Courts do take in consideration intention. The law however does not. And the law here doesn't exists
So why don't courts make knife manufacturers responsible for murders?
First, courts do hold manufacturers responsible for manufacturing or design defects.
Then, generally, "software is just a tool like a knife" doesn't hold because software today is more a service than a tangible good. Companies continue to update the programs and things can happen in the cloud with limited user control.
If you had a big corpo being affected by every knife murder, you'd be sure that they would be liable. Since murders usually "only" affect an individual nothing is being done
Only because they've chosen not to
There is a very real usability issue that has to analysed when developing high risk products, and that's popup fatigue.
A huge number of people just click accept to any popup they get because they're so fed up with seeing them. It's something that is often analysed in design of medical products
I experienced this problem in semiconductor manufacturing.
It was really difficult to explain to Korea that the additional warnings they wanted me to put in front of the tool operators were actually causing more harm than good. The cultural divide made this really difficult to approach.
"What do you mean the American mfg staff don't actually read everything?!"
"Yeah... Especially at the ATX line. We kind of go off vague shapes around here"
Having been through usability studies on the understanding of symbols and their placement on devices, I completely understand this issue.
You can put a very clear warning symbol front and centre, and people will just mentally gloss over it
> There is already a warning when enabling installation of apps from unknown sources. If users don't read that's on them.
Hard disagree. My grandma is just going to follow the scammers directions.
You understand then that there is absolutely no possible fix for that right?
If your grandma will follow current instructions, she will follow these new instructions including a 24 hour wait.
Your grandma will follow instructions to walk down to walgreens and buy a brand new device if they tell her. The solution has nothing to do with the device and everything to do with you needing to be an adult and figure out how to get your grandma to not follow directions of scammers.
This isn't a tech problem and you cannot solve it with tech.
This is not true. Scams rely on continuous urgency and want the entire process completed without you ever hanging up the phone, and cooling-off periods routinely break the illusion.
> That should be enough. If users don't read that's on them.
The phone scammers who are saying the FBI/NSA/IRS will arrest you unless you install sketchy remote access software or other malware are rather convincing to a certain demographic of people and no amount of text on the screen will stop that. It all comes down to whether or not you view the tradeoff being that vulnerable people are worth protecting with this measure worldwide or not.
>Something needs to be done to [reign] in
Should Google be less than an asshole in all things? Yes.
I think there’s this like “something must be done now!” attitude of self-important, busybodies I can’t get behind… even if they’re right.
Why have people convinced themselves into thinking now is the most important thing in the world? That if it doesn’t happen now so that it makes me happy instantly it isn’t an option?
Evolution; social, tech, biological, legal, just fucking takes time, and that’s a feature.
There will be a period in which there’s a ton of food over there but your little fishy fins can’t get to it, and that sucks, but deal with it yourself, or just chill and let things happen. I promise if it’s important someone will solve it eventually and the scales do not need to be tipped for every little thing like phone app permissiveness.
In the meantime, you are free to not buy an android phone if you don’t like the system that Google has produced. You seem to think that because you can see its insides that it is collectively owned. It isn’t. Google owns it. Talk of talking it from its owners, is theft. In this case, justified entirely because you don’t like a process they decided on.
Don’t make me defend Google, I fucking hate Google.
I have huge incentives to have a phone. It means Android or Apple. not exactly a flourishing free market of choices. Banks, the government, places I want to go to all either force me to use an app, or create costs in money and time if I want to avoid using one.
>You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
There is a third position beside "I agree/disagree with the tradeoff", which is "I don't consider the tradeoff as stated truthful and refuse to frame the conversation that way".
Every closing of rights comes with a legitimate-sounding reason. Protect the children, etc. Most activist have been through this process enough times to see the play coming a mile away.
It is also surprising to see, on a place called hacker news, people defending closed systems and removal of agency from end users by giant corporations.
> There is a third position beside "I agree/disagree with the tradeoff", which is "I don't consider the tradeoff as stated truthful and refuse to frame the conversation that way".
Thank you. When you see it once, it becomes so obvious everywhere else. Every single time it's just assertions without hard statistics, always perpetrated by the side that also happens to profit from it or accomplishes something else they really want to do. I'm not going to deny that the number of people who get scammed through sideloading isn't zero, but I don't have to accept as unwritten fact that these lockdowns are actually about that, or that this number of people is significant at all compared to everyone who just wants to install off-Google Play apps, like what Google implied and almost everyone here just accepted.
> It is also surprising to see, on a place called hacker news, people defending closed systems and removal of agency from end users by giant corporations.
The suddenness of the shift is shocking. One of my most popular comments, from no more than several months ago, was about this very topic. It was about the way Google will, like all other corporations, slowly ratchet up their 'measures' until there's no way left but their way. I basically just retold that comment here with very few real changes, and it's already greyed out at the near bottom of the thread. But the shift itself isn't unexpected. Lots of people here aren't the customizer, tinkerer, off the beaten path kind of 'hacker', but the tech enthusiast kind. Lots have direct links to Silicon Valley and the tech overlords of today. As the tech industry consumes everything else in the world, their rhetoric shifts from "Look at all these things we'll let you do!" to "We own you", so does the average sentiment of the users.
As silicon valley shifts from cyber-libertarian to cyber-authoritarian, so will HN, unfortunately.
Many scams are committed thru apps like AnyDesk, TeamViewer, RustDesk... That are apps already in the store. That is a very cheap, easy, proven way of doing it.
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt is a propaganda technique that tech companies have used for long against open source and competitors. The propaganda is to pretend that a 24 hour cooldown and making it difficult to install externals apps is for the good of the user meanwhile stealing their data and giving it to anybody that pays for it.
People are getting hurt. Mass spying should stop now.
Or even Whatsapp, which people already have installed on their phone. No need to go to the store to install anything.
A scammer managed to convince a relative to share their screen during a Whatsapp video call. Luckly, said relative didn't use banking apps on the phone, the bank rejected as suspicious the transaction on the computer which would have sent money to the scammer, and the relative asked me for help before going to the ATM to unblock the account (I then contacted the bank and had them fully block the account as a precaution, and told my relative to go to the bank branch the next day to change the passwords and unblock the account).
Phone carriers can't be bothered to police their networks to mitigate flagrant bad actors, who can't be shut down by state law enforcement, so your software company needs to take control of your device away from you. "For your own safety."
It's just a public confession that none of these organizations - not the carriers, not the government, and not Evil Google, are fit for the responsibilities they've claimed.
Huh? You’re arguing for carriers to inspect all traffic to block scammers? That’s way more intrusive than google blocking sideloading. The outrage on places like HN would be deafening.
Why is my other comment shadowbanned?
Are you kidding?
Small businesses getting blocked by Gmail, Twilio, etc. for legitimate activities is constant.
After researching this for some time, the majority of scams are perpetrated with apps that are already in the Play Store and are remote access apps. The entire premise that the Play Store is safe and everything else is dangerous is not borne out by the empirical evidence.
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
I would turn this right around and say that until the proponents of this measure acknowledge that the Play Store is not safe and is in fact a primary vector for scams, you're just doing propaganda.
I’m all for trying to stop those who are getting harmed from being harmed, but at what point do we acknowledge the ignorance of those people? Installing random apps, provenance truly unknown, to your phone is a bad idea because of the security risk in doing so. I’d have the same advice for someone operating a windows PC. Don’t be downloading and installing random .exe to your environment, you’re gonna have a bad time. The former seems to be this mysterious new idea, unable to comprehend. Most people seem to know the latter and you get flamed for admitting “I installed this random .exe recommended to me by this dude on the phone who said he’s helping me.”
People gotta learn. Sometimes the best teacher is pain and suffering. I wish that weren’t true, but in my time on this planet, there has never been more truth to “you can lead a horse to water, but you certainly can’t make it drink it.”
Trying to save people against their will just doesn’t seem the best path. I’d rather more effort be put into education on best practices, or investment in an app sniffer that can try and identify common attack vectors. Idk, anything other than “some people are too stupid for their own good, so now we all have less freedom.” I mean truly, if you’re worried about grandma’s phone safety, only let her buy an iPhone. No android for mi-ma.
All I see here is Google snatching at the opportunity to get some of that scrumptious walled garden money.
The topic has been discussed multiple times, and propaganda really feels like not acknowledging past discussions. You might not have seen past discussions so I'll give you a pass and restate my argument.
One important way that scams reach end users are through the willing participation of ad platforms, and even before DSA (not that much has changed) people (myself included) have done countless reports of straight up scam ads with no recourse and a templated "we have found nothing wrong with the ad".
As a data point, have you not seen the Tai Chi AI ads on YouTube that will "make you a different person by the end of the week" which where run by a company that sold you a subscription via dark patterns with all the surprises that brings (like a big headache of an unsubscribe process).
Or the fact that Meta knows that X% of it's ads are scam/phising and do nothing about it because it hurts the bottomline (an AI chat will help you with references).
The hypocrisy is too much coming from Google since they are owners of the machine that feed scams right to your doorstep.
And let's not ignore all the other fronts they are fighting on to further lock down the Android platform (such as not making source available immediately and moving more of the runtime in their play services and platform integrity nonsense).
I'm somebody who likes lifting weights. I often lift weights heavy enough that, if done improperly, could harm me greatly and grossly.
There are people at my gym who often have very bad form who I worry about. I will occasionally chat them up so they're not, for example, shoulder pressing with their arms outside of the scapular plane [0] or benching without any arch in their back [1]. Sometimes they appreciate it and ask me more questions. Sometimes they give me a terse 'thanks' and go back to doing it the way they want to do it.
If somehow every gym started forbidding people from using any equipment with which they could harm themselves unless they could prove, with a 24h cooling off period, that they knew the form and dangers in detail, I'm sure it would probably save a few people from suffering temporary injuries. I think it would also drive a lot of people away from any kind of sustained resistance training and be an overall net negative for public health.
Personally, I don't think such a nanny-state implementation is necessary? That you should be able to easily toggle off such a feature if you like and what happens to you happens. Perhaps there should be a 'tech-illiterate' mode toggled on by default but easily toggled off if you know how to access Developer Options with a little more forewarning about common scams. Perhaps gyms (or Google) could pay people to proactively assist and help people they see as the most vulnerable to certain kinds of exploits. Perhaps instead of spending time training Gemini to be a general-assist LLM they could train a very small local model to hyperspecifically guard against known intrusions.
There are so many more pro-social, less-draconian ways of tackling safety issues, from socialization to ongoing support to education efforts. A lockdown that just happens to also help ensure that they can extract their pound of flesh inside the abattoir that is Google Play seems at best overly protective and at worst just more corporate extraction of surplus value from individuals.
[0] https://brookbushinstitute.com/glossary/scapular-plane
[1] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/how-to-bench/#:~:text=it%2...
> the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate:
The risk of people cutting themselves is not a responsibility nor a concern for the knife manufacturers. I would be very upset if one day all kitchen knives would be sold blunt just to mitigate some clueless people from cutting their fingers off.
Similarly, I seriously and absolutely don't get it why people falling for scams should be a reason to require KYC to distribute apps.
Especially given that KYC-passed accounts are easily obtainable online for pennies.
Uh it absolutely is a concern and a responsibility . Different knives are made the way they are precisely to avoid people cutting themselves accidentally during various kinds of cutting motions. Additionally blunt knives are significantly more dangerous than sharp ones which is why they don't ship blunt ones.
Maybe before trying to go off half assed exactly like this outrage website does, you should take 5 minutes to be bothered to see if what you are saying is even mildly correct. Even five seconds of searching would tell you pretty much everything you wrote is wrong.
Lots of things are compromises intended to serve multiple goals rather than just drive one particular goal to the extreme. In that sense knives are exactly like what is happening here. You may not like that. But it is at least accurate, unlike what you wrote
These scams regularly go on for days anyway. Now the scammer just gets them to install it and says "we'll call you back tomorrow to finish getting rid of the viruses"
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
I would argue pretending like this is actually for anyone's security is propaganda hiding the fact that this is all for Google to tighten its grip on Android.
> Personally, I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise to allow user freedom while slowing down attackers sufficiently to mitigate the harm.
The best solution would have been to be able to mark ANY alternative app store like fdroid as trusted and no such cooldown period would hit every time people install an app from there. This avoids that people can immediately use installed apps downloaded from an arbitrary URL but at the same time keeps the alternative app stores as a good alternative. Google decided to play unfair again.
The 24 hour wait happens once, not on every app install.
Oh, ok, thanks for the information. But if it is a one-time, device-level wait, not per source and not per app, then I'm unsure how this should prevent scammers in the long term?
I'm pretty convinced it is just Google testing boiling the water steady and slowly :)
Scammers often create a sense of urgency/emergency, especially over the phone, and putting a 24hr limit on it gives the person more time to possibly realize they're getting scammed.
It's not 100% perfect, but it helps reduce scams. And with AI, scams are probably going to get more frequent and harder to realize it's a scam.
If you know you want your phone unlocked, just start the process as soon as you get your phone, and then it's yours. It's like an extra day of shipping.
-
Edit: Google explains this more:
In these scenarios, scammers exploit fear – using threats of financial ruin, legal trouble, or harm to a loved one – to create a sense of extreme urgency. They stay on the phone with victims, coaching them to bypass security warnings and disable security settings before the victim has a chance to think or seek help.
According to a 2025 report from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA), 57% of surveyed adults experienced a scam in the past year, resulting in a global consumer loss of $442 billion.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...
Thanks for taking the time to explain this. This sounds reasonable to me too. However, it might be just the start :)
When I was still on android, I installed F-Droid to avoid the google app store entirely, since the google app store's vetting is -uh- not very good.
The correct move is to remove the (icon for) the google app store from inexperienced user's phones. (I'm dead serious, and it works)
Unfortunately, that's exactly the move that now gets sabotaged by this google change.
So sure I'll acknowledge the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate. It does in fact marginally mitigate the precise narrow risk they state, but introduces a fatal flaw in its place. Probably unwise to let naive users use android at all anymore after this.
> This sort of breathless outrage rhetoric would be a lot easier to take seriously if it spent even a minute acknowledging the very real risk to users that this is meant to mitigate: tech support scams where people are walked through installing an app that takes over their phone and steals their money, private data, and identity.
1. Is requiring developers to submit government ID actually an effective way to prevent tech support scams? Will scammers actually be deterred by a government ID requirement in addition to the existing developer registration process?
2. Is requiring developers to submit government ID the best option to prevent tech support scams? Are there other options that Google could use to make Android user less susceptible to tech support scams?
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
The tradeoff, such as it is, is acknowledged on keepandroidopen.org under the "But wait, isn't this...just about security?" section:
> The security rationale is a smokescreen. Google Play Protect already scans for malware independent of developer identity. Requiring a government ID doesn't make code safer.
Finally:
> Personally, I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise to allow user freedom while slowing down attackers sufficiently to mitigate the harm.
I don't think this is an excellent compromise. Scammers are persistent. I'm not convinced a 24 hour cooldown is enough to deter them in any meaningful way. I, on the other hand, am not persistent enough to wait 24 hours to install an Android app from F-Droid just to try it out.
Google, who gladly take the money from criminals in exchange for funneling victims to their scam websites have the moral high ground and are unfortunately forced to take away the user's freedoms?
Google has an entire org dedicated to detecting and preventing bad ads.
I have many coworkers who work very hard on this problem.
The claim that Google does not care about ads integrity runs counter to my experience.
Look at the incentives. Google makes money from scam ads. Most ads I see online are scams of some sort. If Google completely blocked scams, they might not be in business.
Yes I understand that Google says they care a lot about scams and that there are people there working on blocking scams. But those are words. We need to look at money.
There is a very simple way that Google can block basically all scam ads: review all ads manually before approval, and allow no dynamic changes. They won’t do this, because it would implode their business model.
Look at the incentives. Google makes money from ads. Bad ads cause users to distrust Google ads, causing those users to be less valuable, causing advertisers to spend less with Google.
The goal is maintaining a continuous stream of revenue, not killing the stream for short term gains.
Advertisers don’t care about what other ads are doing, why would they?
Google not only benefits from scam ads, they innovated the entire scam ad economy. Prior to the proliferation of automated online ad services, ads on TV, print media et al were carefully reviewed. There were very little scams.
Naturally such a business has a scaling cap. Online websites would collaborate with advertisers directly, and there were little to no scams. Then Google and others entered the picture and innovated automatic ads with virtually no human verification. After that, we saw an entire online scam ad economy explode.
It’s not just that Google doesn’t care enough about scam ads. They created scam ads, it’s their bread and butter. Not just Google either, we see the same thing with meta on their platforms. The scams will not go away.
There have been a ton of scams my Customers have reported over the years that I've traced back to users clicking bad ads.
Google may care a lot, but if my experience is any indicator they don't care enough.
Work smarter, not harder.
1 day old account, name is a string of numbers, every comment is argumentative. Yep, all the signs are there
Another small credit to Google - their developer registration (which unlocks all of this) is CHEAP.
Apple's is a scam in comparison and must be repaid every year.
That is a real concern, but I don’t for a minute believe that it’s Google’s only motivation. This is also securing a revenue stream and making it harder for others to compete.
Full disclosure, I am an iPhone user in part because I personally like living in the walled garden. But I also acknowledge that it has its downsides. I have a separate Android device just for language learning because the open source language learning app ecosystem is basically nonexistent on Apple’s locked-down platform. I’m not thrilled about the possibility of that ecosystem withering and dying on Android, too.
So Google is going to tackle scams on youtube too right? Because they care so much about the poor scam victims, and this has nothing to do with establishing overarching control.
Why do we keep having to sacrifice our freedom for the fake safety of the ignorant and their continued freedom to be ignorant?
Why do we have to be lectured on how important this change is for their safety, while the Play store continues to be the primary location scam apps come from?
When do the companies get to be the ones that have to give up their own freedoms in favor of everyone else's safety?
I'm fine with this as long as F-Droid and other stores are treated equally.
If I have to wait 24h to install an app from another store, I demand the same to apply to AppStore. I see app stores just like browsers: users must have the ability to choose which browser they want when installing an operating system, and for Android, users must be able to select which app store they want and they should work the same way.
> I think the 24h cooldown is an excellent compromise
I don't. An hour would make the same point and provide the same level of protection. So would clicking through a few screens with very simple and easy to understand warning messages about the risk of scams. Sure, it's a compromise, but it's pretty much the opposite of excellent.
A scammer would stay on the phone for an hour so they don't talk to anyone else about it. A few screens would be ignored.
24 hours might not be enough, and there is a risk that a scammer gets a user to go into developer mode and then calls back a few days later to try and 'fix the issue' or something. At least in 24 hours the victim might talk to someone about it and then find they're being scammed.
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
I strongly agree with this statement.
If a piece of public communication is intended to sway the reader's opinion without informing them (or while selectively informing them, which is close to the same thing), it is propaganda.
Is this really just a 24h cooldown once?
That's what they said it's going to be. A one time 24 hr cooldown to turn on the "Allow Unverified Packages" setting, not 24hr per app.
And then you have the option:
- unverified packages either temporarily (7 days)
- or indefinitely
Official docs here:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...
Yes. Visit https://keepandroidopen.org/ and ctrl+f "escape hatch" for more info
for now.
If that's really what it is, Google should put their money where their mouth is. I'd be ok with this change if you had to go through all the same hoops to install apps through the Play store.
There is already many warnings and if the can get you to do that they can get you to other types of scams rather don't require installing an app like sharing data, putting info on websites.
Filippo, I'm rather surprised and disappointed to see this come from you. I'd much rather see Google working on preventing abuse of apps already installable via the Play Store, instead of imposing restrictions on those who do not want to use their store to begin with.
I don't mind warnings and even brief cool downs but 24 hours is ridiculous.
If I lose or break my phone, I have to wait 24 hours after acquiring my new phone to use the apps I previously used? It's just absurd.
If I had to explain to clients that I was unable to do work until tomorrow, I'd be ridiculed.
Is it for safety or for collecting more rent. Certainly google can withhold installation till the new app is tested with their super duper Ai.
Do you really think there are enough affected developers that it will move the revenue needle at all for Google?
I think this was probably a very easy decision for Google after they weighed benefits and harms to users and developers.
I am certain that its not about harm but rather US supremacy doctrine. They are tightening their noose. You have to be approved to live in their digital world and pay rent.
Seriously? You think people in Mountain View are sitting around in conference rooms showing slide decks on US supremacy doctrine?
Yup.. thats what I think.. little steps towards monopoly worldwide. How did the current admin came about? why are these lakes of gulfs are being named America-yada-yada then and the private corps had the legal rights not to do it. Who do you think backs them up to collect rent worldwide and appose any regulation that reduces their hold? They want access and full control; that's whats about.
I remind you that Ai can reverse compile and find viruses and crap and they could have tested multiple gazillion apps simultaneously even before Ai.
Being naive is one thing and that is fine but trying to advocate naivety is something else.
In my opinion, its about collecting new money and forced compliance worldwide to collect more and more. Every software company wants to collect rent from around world and that is why they are tightening their noose once their they know that they have some form of monopoly. It is not just mere accident in universe.
What a surprising take coming from a Google employee.
So this will end tech support scams, then?
Also. I regularly remove malware from people's android phones pro bono in and around my community. It all comes from the play store.
Sorry, I get where your emotions are coming from with this, but it is just technically wrong on every level.
The vast majority of tech support scams come through apps on the Play Store. Not only that, but malicious apps get approved on the Play Store constantly.
There is no reason to take any claim that this change is meant to mitigate scams seriously, because there's no evidence to support that it makes a noticeable dent in such activity.
What this change does noticeably and impactfully do, is prevent, via chilling effects, users from being able to use their phones in ways that could lose Google and its partner vendors post-sales revenue.
As you said, serving people should be the end in itself, and this change doesn't do that - it hurts people.
It's like locking people out of their own home, and then when people express outrage the concern troll steps in from out of frame to point out that they're not acknowledging the very real risk that if they could access their own house gasp they might accidentally let the wrong person in, or break something, or whatever.
Googler propaganda. Huge majority of scams is through play store apps and AdMob ads. Google doesn't care about scams, they care about control and sucking up money.
This comment is legitimately just "think of the children!?!!" with extra steps.
Simply add a setting to the phone for the technologically illiterate and/or young and old.
I can't even imagine how locked down and terrible the internet would be if we had this rhetoric around in the 90s.
You think the tech illiterate are going to turn on their own protection? So it's on by default, then this adds a 24 hour wait to turn it off
It's exactly the same as the people crying conspiracy about parts-locking for repairability, not acknowledging the real effects it had on phone thefts and the pressure at the national and governmental level to help solve the epidemic.
What would help a lot from Google side is:
1) make it optional
2) don't put it on a timer. What's most damning, in my opinion, is that this is the very definition of a bait-and-switch. Any rational person thinks this won't apply to their existing phone because it came before the rollout, right? It's only android 15 and onward? No. That's wrong, it'll apply to YOUR phone. Google. Non-Google. Doesn't matter. Android 12, 13, 14? Nope applies to them all. That's just an accident then?
This is nothing but a business decision to extort money from developers and you know it. It's anti-competitive at its core, locking out other, more reliable app stores and taking control of an open source operating system. It's just one more measure in a long trend of fulfilling the wet dreams of large tech, namely killing personal computing and controlling everything people can do with devices they've bought.
> You can disagree with the tradeoff, but if you don't acknowledge it you're just doing propaganda.
The propaganda I'm seeing is coming from Google. I can't tell you how many times lately I've seen ads on TV/streaming pushing the security narrative for Play Store. Google knows what it is doing is blatantly anti-consumer and they very much want public sentiment to think it's not.
There will always be means to scam individuals through technology. Pulling stunts like this is not justified simply because it closes off one means of doing so.
This sounds like know-it-all propaganda as well. Why not make it opt-in? Google (and other Big Tech companies) seem to think they know better than everyone else, even though they are also completely untransparent about what they do.
IMO a more precise framing is that what is being removed is the ability of anonymous developers to have wide distribution on Android devices. That is, after these changes, you (as an app developer) can either:
- be a registered developer, and target all Android users (Google Play Store, F-Droid, distributing .apk files, etc), or
- remain anonymous, and target only a subset of Android users (all "power users" who do the one-time 24-hour cooldown, or a small number of users if you use the student/hobbyist path, and of course anyone can install their own apps on their own device with adb).
This is definitely an unfortunate step backwards from Android's prior openness, but is still more open than iOS (my comparison from a previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939361), and is basically Google being forced by the governments of certain countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand) where malicious-app phone scams have led to a lot of people losing their savings (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45909348).
> and is basically Google being forced by the governments of certain countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand) where malicious-app phone scams have led to a lot of people losing their savings (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45909348).
No, no it is not. If Google didn't love these changes, they'd do what Apple does with the EU. Malicious compliance, or at worst, only complying there. The LLM providers do the same.
Google loves, wants, and has instigated these changes. They are not being rolled out because some governments are asking for them. Those governments would never have specifically asked for these measures anyway; they'd have asked "can you reduce these scams?". And if Google had wanted to act on this, they wouldn't have done this either because they know that the overwhelming majority of these scams are from Play Store apps or from ads, often through AdMob itself, never passing through non-store apps. Those are a sliver of scams.
This is propaganda with zero backing in evidence.
That's fair; there is some slight evidence in the linked comments of pressure from those governments, but you're right, Google's own comments show it agreeing with the principle. E.g. they say that identifying and banning malicious apps isn't very effective if the developers can make slight changes and distribute modified apps immediately. So the basic idea of anonymous apps having wide distribution is what is being targeted.
I guess the an alternative open unix based operating system that can upload existing apps from both android as well as apple is needed or the greed will not ever end. This is about corporations that constantly need growth using new ways to collect rent from the rest of the world. They are chocking the world to collect new monies.
They are recommending installing F-droid.. and not accepting android's demands. Its time to have open source smart phone operating system that can not be taken hostage.
The problem is that these OSes have achieved regulatory lock-in. Your bank app won't work on an alternative OS because it's not trusted. In some countries that means you can't access online government services through the standard path either.
You are right. They can go through approval or have dual operating systems that can be installed on smart phones. No separate booting is required
Also people should and could use the browser interface rather than apps for their banking but certain applications don't exist in browser world.
https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
The apps are not approved for banking but I suppose people can use the browser interface rather than apps
Android allowing sideloading is the single biggest reason I've been an android die-hard my entire life.
Enable developer mode now, then you'll be ready for this.
My bank application doesn't run if it detects developer mode enabled.
iOS not allowing sideloading is probably the biggest reason I’m happy my family is on iOS.
My whole family is on android devices and none of them install stuff outside of playstore by mistake.
There is plenty of warning and friction to be able to do that already.
Then...stay in the iOS ecosystem? We don't have to ruin our devices for people who won't even use them.
I’m not saying the contrary. My point is that the lack of sideloading may also be a good thing, depending on your point of view.
As a long time iOS user, I just switched to GrapheneOS as the lack of sideloading, after 8 years, became too much pain.
Incidentally, with this update, Android will lose any edge it had, and become a shittier and less polished version of iOS.
This is just the beginning. Whine much as you (we) like, Google was absolutely prepared for our complaints and pushback when they made this decision. And no amount of our feedback changed their path.
Thus, we should absolutely expect next steps for Android to slowly go into walled garden mode: no dev unlocking for certain devices, dev unlock after mandatory KYC, etc, etc.
Just to highlight as this often gets misreported when this is raised.
You will still be able to install unsigned APKs, but the first-time procedure to unlock the ability will include a 24 hour wait. After that, unsigned APKs can still be installed as usual
And APKs outside of the Play store can still be distributed unsigned, subject to the 24 hour wait for Play Protect devices
Honestly, I'm less concerned with the initial wait and more concerned about how this is run entirely through Google Play Services, leaving Google with the ability to alter the deal next time they have another benevolent security decree.
Well it's a Google Play protect feature, so it's blocked by google, not standard Android
I moved to Android in 2022 from the iPhone ecosystem. I've been thru one phone replacement cycle and it was glorious. I got by without ever using Google Play and never had to tie my phone to any "ecosystem".
I had "sideloaded" all the APKs for the software I used on the old phone and saved the APKs. Moving to a new phone was just a matter of loading all the software and copying my rsync'd backups onto the new phone. It was wonderful. Just like moving to a new PC.
I guess I'm happy I got to have this experience for a little while.
Edit: I've found a few apps I can't used because they require Play attestation. Eventually I'll hit one of those that I need and I'll be at an impasse irrespective of this particular power grab.
Switch to GrapheneOS, or Lineage.
I'm already a Moto phone user so assuming GrapheneOS becomes available on a Motorola phone next year I probably will switch.
Edit: I have at least one app that won't run under GrapheneOS (Microsoft Authenticator) so I'll be stuck with a two-phone carry, too. >sigh<
Note that GrapheneOS won't be supported on current Motorola phones. Only the yet to be released models with the new Snapdragon flagship SoC like the Signature 27 will be supported. Others, don't meet the requirements.
Good catch. I wouldn't want people to get that impression. My reference to being a current Motorola Customer was a statement about liking their build quality (and their not being Google).
I am using a Pixel 7 now, bought specifically to ensure I can run Graphene, but there is a high likelihood I will be getting a Moto phone for my next one!
From “Don’t be evil” to Evil in Action, it took less than 20 years …
It took about 2 years. April 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin [0].
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers... we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm."
October 2000: Google adds ads.
[0] https://research.google/pubs/the-anatomy-of-a-large-scale-hy...
Let's be real, it was always theirs. Wish it wasn't so, though.
The thing that this enables are governments locking down apps used for protesting, e.g. Indian government petitioned to take down the „BitChat“ app by Jack Dorsey, as it was (successfully) used to circumvent the mobile carrier shutdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitChat#Usage
Not trying to go to bat for Google here, but this smells to me like them trying to abide by Know Your Customer regulation.
I don't love it either, but "why doesn't Google just ignore that regulation?" doesn't seem viable. (Companies only ignore laws when it's profitable, of course.)
What kind of KYC involves controlling what software people are allowed to use?
That's the wrong angle. It's the kind of kyc that involves knowing who can distribute software on your platform.
Google started that push some time ago [0], this is a different policy. How does that require preventing the installation of unknown-to-Google apps on devices that belong to unknown-to-Google users?
And how is a 24-hour wwaiting period related to KYC, when it doesn't require a user to pass an ID check?
[0] https://testerbee.com/blog/google-play-developer-verificatio...
Their platform is Google Play. They don't get to know or restrict what runs on the open-source Android operating system.
A 24-hour wait (or "cooldown period") prior to installing the F-Doid app doesn't require an ID check, just patience and the (IMO delusional) belief that Google will never tighten up that workaround. You might have to expand on how this is in any way related to KYC
To echo other comments, it would be really good if posts on this subject were more complete about the details of what's happening if for no other reason thаn it's difficult to understand the situation without those details. I'm pretty anti-corporate but it's hard to be anti-corporate without a level, complete picture.
Concretely in my case, I read all the fdroid materials that were linked to from the fdroid pop-ups and they left me hanging, trying to understand what was actually happening. I finally looked it up, and what I found was a lot more clear and actionable than what was communicated by, for example, Fdroid. Obviously Google's motives are clear, but I had to work pretty hard to figure out what was going on.
This style of communication is what will will undo graphene and fdroid and all these other organizations because it's just not useful, professional or appealing.
What does GrapheneOS have to do with the post or the website? We didn't make the website nor did we help with its messaging. We agreed to be listed on the website, but we describe the changes differently when it comes up in our community spaces, when asked via email email, or otherwise.
I got a used pixel 10a and installed GrapheneOS on it partly due to this.
Alternatively the duopoly hard block might push linux mobile development in to overdrive (with AI assistance?)
Maybe stop using Android? I feel like there are a lot of decent distros these days. This helps accelerate it.
Which ones did you have in mind?
https://www.mobian.org/
https://nura.eco/
KaiOS
Pretty dead for me when they don't support the messaging app I need (yeah yeah people should use open protocol blah blah, but pretty much everyone in my country use them and I won't be able to convert them), nor transport (regular cabs can easily cost twice), and last I heard they don't even support copy paste between apps.
There isn't even any high res large touch screen KaiOS phone. I want to watch HD movies and read articles in comfort without scrolling all the time.
I don't think users are as susceptible to scam as companies portray. I also think an hour of class at school will teach people enough. In fact, people grew up with Internet don't even seem to need that.
Nowadays it seems that there's dumbing down of everything. Don't let technology replace education and common sense.
If your solution requires "why doesn't everyone just" then you don't have a solution. People don't read warnings, license agreements, nothing.
I thought Google was adding more hoops to jump through for F-Droid, Termux and the like. Did that change? Obviously the more hoops the less happy we will be, but it'd be nice to know.
The only hoop is that there's an initial 24 hour wait to unlock APK installs. After that it works as normal
Until they just ban it later.
Keep in mind they’re crippling devices. You’ve already paid for, it’s not like I’m gonna go to the store tomorrow and buy a new phone with significantly reduced functionality. Instead Google is reducing the functionality I already paid for.
yeah right, ever heard of boiling the frog? it's only 24 hours, it's only a week, it's only a month, until "who needs sideloading after all"?
How does this work on lineageos?
I'd just turn off my phone before midnight, boot it into fastboot and reflash lineage 2 days later, missing the window for them to push anything. No gapps btw.
The 24 hour waiting period is absolutely ridiculous. The article says to download alternative stores but I thought they too are impacted as it is the installation mechanic.
The waiting period is the best way to combat coercion. If I’m setting up a new phone, the setup already takes multiple hours that adding 24 hours doesn’t really mean much. It does a wonderful job of making sure you actually really want this app.
What about when you're not setting up a new phone? A waiting period doesn't combat coercion. Look at the people who have been kidnapped and held for days because the ATM has daily withdrawal limits.
In related news, I found this new app store in GrapheneOS's app store (dawg I heard you like app stores...). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50192083
The phone was never yours. You have a nice, granular set of permissions which (attempt to) control what apps can do ... but you don't really have any permissions that prevent you from _Google_ spying on you and selling your data or giving it up to law enforcement. It's like the propaganda radio you can turn down, but never off. You're given just enough control to feel like you have a choice.
Time for a bugmenot.com version for Android develop accounts?
1761710621 | Keep Android Open | https://keepandroidopen.org/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45742488 | 893 comments
1771953671 | Open Letter to Google on Mandatory Developer Registration for App Distribution | https://keepandroidopen.org/open-letter/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47139765 | 381 comments
1776257256 | Keep Android Open | https://keepandroidopen.org/cta/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47778274 | 69 comments
1777389660 | Your phone is about to stop being yours | https://keepandroidopen.org/en/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935853 | 910 comments
1778236465 | Keep Android Open | https://keepandroidopen.com/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48061201 | 3 comments
1788273664 | Why did the Android side loading lockdown change from Sept to January 2027? | https://keepandroidopen.org/faq/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49522647
Having an "open source" mobile os that is still for all purposes ruled by google was a evil genius level of move.
We need a truly open-source os, everything else is going to be a patch over a bullet hole.
So i wont be able to install .apk files for test purposes? thats terrible.
whats the way forward?
You can install apks via usb debugging as normal.
You can't just click a random apk in a website and install it. At least without the 24 hour wait workaround, done once per device.
Free install by ADB, and Developer-moding once per device, not once per app / install? Yeah, OK. I don't quite get the outrage, then.
Before you @ me, HN, I run GrapheneOS. I fully understand and practice "own your own hardware". Most people probably shouldn't, though, because they lack the technical ability / interest to do so safely, and throwing them to the wolves strikes me as ideology pushed to the point of foolishness.
Now, y'all can flame my ass.
People are more worried about the inevitable tightening of the noose that will happen from now on. 24 hour delay is just the start IMO. Eventually it will be adb only. Then adb but only valid for a week, like Apple...
> I don't quite get the outrage, then.
Because it's just the beginning.
We don't know that it's once per device. It's been said by Google that it'll be once per device, but we haven't seen the code and we don't know the method of tracking that. What if I wipe my OS? What if I wipe data in play services? Will a future silent play services update conveniently break my p2p messaging app during a protest?
> What if I wipe my OS?
Almost certainly that would reset this. Why would it not?
> What if I wipe data in play services?
No idea. Is this a thing people do?
> Will a future silent play services update conveniently break my p2p messaging app during a protest?
Google can already do that today.
Okay, thanks.
You can still install unsigned APKs via ADB. Or you can install unsigned APKs following an initial 24 hour wait. Or you can install APKs on non-Play Protect devices
Does it affect GrapheneOS? No? So use that then.
I've already said this, but here is roughly how this progression is going to go:
1. You own your device and can install anything you want on it (what we have today)
2. Google gently yanks you away from the simple workflows, leaving you with ADB or their 24 hour hoop to jump through. If you opt for the second, you get a choice between allowing 'unverified' installs for 7 days or indefinitely. Huh, that's weird, who would ever pick the 7 day option, right?
3. The dust settles and some time passes. Google decides that the indefinite option is just way too dangerous, the users are not safe if they are allowed to use this freedom. They'll just claim there's countless clueless grandmas getting entangled in multi-day-long scams that hinge on the sideloading feature, and they simply can't let them suffer so much. They will generously disable the 'indefinite' option.
4. 7 days may still be too much, maybe the sensible decision is to move to a 24 hour countdown per app. I mean, if you want it so badly, you have to work for it - that means you'll have more time to mull over the security of every single app you put on your phone.
5. Huh, for some reason it looks like almost no users are installing apps from outside Google Play anymore. We'll keep the feature on life support for a while, and then retire the legacy unverified installation workflow, to be replaced by a temporary limited permission for verified developers to briefly install their own in-development apps on their device. That ought to be enough.
This pathway for extinguishing features that are inconvenient for massive corporations isn't new. I really do not understand how everyone supporting Google's side here doesn't see this, and why they're so willing to wholeheartedly and without reservation believe them on matters of security where pushing one opinion also happens to conveniently align with their profit motive.
Very well, I'll install Graphene OS at step 4, or step 3 if I'm getting a new phone.
I hope that at step 4 this choice will still be as easy as it is today. When we get to that level of lockdown (which may take some years, but we'll get there), it's entirely plausible that Google will move to restrict bootloader unlocking on any phones that ship with Google services. It is 'more safe' after all. That will limit you to the niche of old or special de-Googled smartphones from small manufacturers, or maybe some Chinese market phones. All of this of course also comes with loads of their own anti-competitive kneecapping - you'll lose all attestation or 'integrity' features, so any feature or app that decided it was important enough will no longer work for you, which will probably be the vast majority of them by that point.
No matter what you do, it will never be as good as it once was. We've moved from a world where custom, 'hacker' type stuff could coexist with convenient apps and corporate or government services to a world where anything custom or unauthorized effectively doesn't exist, except for a few restrictive and mangled exceptions that require a lot of pain to get to and limit your device in many ways.
Google play store was ruled a monopoly and the Apple App store was not. Google allows alternatives on their platform and Apple strictly forbids it.
If the legal system dictates that open = monopoly and closed = fair game, then you get dumb shit like this.
Probably one of the dumbest rulings in tech ever, but few people know about it. Basically set precedent to never share your platform if you don't want legal scrutiny.
The last couple of Android phones I bought, I rooted within 1 hour of owning them. The current one will probably be my last Android phone.
Might have to switch to iphone...
otherwise my next phone will be linux
You mean "might as well switch to an iphone, if the phone stops being mine"
But I mean what are you saying really? An iPhone absolutely doesn't allow you to just randomly install stuff from the web unless there's been some update that I don't know about.
"I don't want to wait 24 hours to have an open phone, so I'd rather have a closed phone"
I haven’t used Android over 10 years. But it makes it sound like iOS now, doesn’t it?
And this is why I've been recommending iPhones to my family when I always recommended Android
Why exactly? Even after this move, iPhone is less open. Apple doesn't have the 24h escape hatch.
Or the adb escape hatch. IIRC, their adb equivalent is limited to having a small number of apps installed at the same time, needs each app to be periodically reinstalled at short intervals (IIRC, one week), and you need to have your expensive Apple laptop with you for that reinstall.
Even with Android becoming much more closed, it's still more open than Apple.
> Having a small number of apps installed at the same time, needs each app to be periodically reinstalled at short intervals (IIRC, one week), and you need to have your expensive Apple laptop with you for that reinstall.
Not true if one pays up ($99/yr), in which case the interval becomes one year. Also apps that sign and install other apps with one's cert exist.
I said for my family. I will likely still be buying android for myself, probably the grapheneos one if it comes out.
But for most people, the existing flow to allow external sources is already too much. For other people to install my APKs, while possible, is a slow and painful procese. Add waiting 24 hours? As good as blocked.
That's like recommending amputation to fix a bad knee. IOS is categorically worse in this department.
Could you elaborate? This tactic feels identical to the way apple locks down apps to the app store, which requires paid developer accounts
Exactly, because now they are identical. And their phones are generally better, the prices now are also comparable or even cheaper.
I mean, I am also an iPhone fan, but our phones stopped being "ours", in the sense that this page warns about, approximately 6,679 days ago.
Ah, Apple, that true bastion of open software and not screwing over developers or customers.
...
30 cents out of every dollar, you say?
... Because they've been less open from the start?
It seems to me like they mean that Android has now lost its technical advantage, so might as well use the option with the shinier UI.
In this age of AI why don't we have Linux running on random phone hardware yet?
SailfishOS, Ubuntu Touch, and Nura seem to be good contenders. One of them must become a real alternative to the duopoly.
Regulation by 3rd parties. People use phones for payments and accessing sensitive services. But these apps work only on Android / iOS. There those who don't seek this use case, but there are rather small and increasingly shrinking minority. This is compounded by the knowhow needed to install non-stock OS on phone in the first place.
This is increasingly becoming the case. There have been a few posts on Reddit of people successfully porting Arch and other distros to phone hardware (typically seems to be OnePlus?). My handheld game console, a Snapdragon 8 Gen2-based Android device by Retroid, just got official first-party support for running Linux on it.
It was never ours in the first place. Big tech owns us
Will this affect Shizuku + InstallerX Revived? I mean worst case I will disable gapps or even better finally unlock my Xiaomi bootloader, in the last 15 years I've had unlocked bootloader (or at least root) on pretty much every single device, it was just too troublesome to unlock Xiaomi though there is already offline workaround so might as well do it finally.
For the defenders of Google's (and previously Apple's) behavior, I'd like to point out that if any of this was for the sake of security, developer ID certification would be left to an independent international organization and not be under company control. That would also clearly have legal advantages.
That's how it's done with domain names, with security advisories and disclosures, etc. That they don't do it for developers shows that it's about control and anti-competitive business behavior (preventing other app stores).
"Starting in 2027, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID."
Will not apply if updates are blocked
Good to have old phones, i.e., not primary phone, where user can block updates
Some users may want a portable, pocket-sized computer that the user can reasonably control (old phone) in addition to one controlled by Google or Apple (primary phone)
Maybe think of it like an "A/B test". Primary phone with the update and old phone without the update
For some users, the "threat model" may be Google and the long list of its government, corporate and other partners
Maybe some users just want relief from data collection, surveillance and ads
Not every user is the same
Some (not all) users may be willing to sacrifice some alleged "security" provided by an ad services company (wtf) in exchange for more _user control_
No "DNS trickery" is required to block this update but the user does need to control the phone's access to DNS, obviously. Users concerned about "keeping Android open" are probably doing this already
I have been blocking connections to Google servers, e.g., "updates", Google Play Services, and many, many others, on old phones for years. There are many ways to do it
For example, a local forward proxy works well; I run proxies on the phone and on the gateway
Blocking can also be done using only Android apps alone, e.g., Netguard, PCAPDroid
There are probably dozens of ways to block updates. It's not difficult
> Will not apply if updates are blocked
This will not arrive through Android updates but through Google Play Services.
You can try to block Play Services using DNS trickery, but it's like whackamole. The only way to be guaranteed safe from this update is to run a ROM without Google services installed.
I'm just gonna leave this here - https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
Yeah, I'm on e/OS so good luck with that
Make a web app
i am using lineage os on some devices. It does not even have google play. On others I have GrapheneOS which is sandboxed. How that does affects me?
It’ll increase your opportunities to let people know what OS you’re running by at least 10-fold. I’m running arch btw.
>> It’ll increase your opportunities to let people know what OS you’re running by at least 10-fold.
Two types of people will benefit: 1. the genuine & naive who want to help but don't make much progress; 2. those who attended Harvard.
You're running arch on a phone? I was unaware that was an option on mobile.
Been for a while now.
https://linmob.net/my-setup-with-danctnix-archlinuxarm/ (2021)
I do that never. So it will still be never :)
In short, it doesn't affect you. Even if you tried installing the app that enforces the changes on GrapheneOS, it wouldn't have the necessary privileges to do anything.
Your app ecosystem might decrease as developers who don't want to register lose interest and the number of users supporting open source projects decreases.
checks recent rhetoric yep looks like Google are run by racists who think just anyone can get a government ID.
I appreciate the message but these AI slop HR speak websites really need to be shamed out of existence
> The EFF calls app gatekeeping "an ever-expanding pathway to internet censorship."
I think what's interesting, and what our grandchildren will look back on, was how naive the early internet was. There was almost this sense of "the government is powerless" whether it be piracy or jailbreaking or casual death threats [8647 style] or who knows what else. Combined with also a sense that devices will always be exploitable, there's always a way around, resistance from government and corporations will always be futile.
I hate it when people just say "government". Is this the US government and does it apply elsewhere or not?
um my phone is not affected by this thank you very much
I know this will get downvoted, but WTH :)
> Starting in 2027, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
Android is owned by Google, so in all fairness they can do whatever they want, so they don't need anyone consent.
This is not the problem it is presented to be, and I see more benefits to this than prejudice.
There is a very concerning amount of illegal apps/scams distributed through ads that I've casual users install somewhat banally with the aid of short walkthroughs.
Any sufficiently advanced user is barely affected by this, as the procedure is just complex enough to block average people from getting scammed/using illegal services unknowingly, but simple enough to barely be an inconvenience for anyone who cares enough and can go through it.
"This is barely an inconvenience, it's just a 9-step, 24h-long step through a proprietary service, and mandatory sign-up with governmental ID for the developers, everyone technical enough can easily bypass it"
I believe this is usually referred to as "boiling the frog".
The page addresses it: https://keepandroidopen.org/#objections
24h delay is not all of it, there's developer verification.
What does this mean? An app needs developer verification or the phone needs to be in dev mode, no?
You don't need to verify to distribute unsigned APKs
You are assuming that the 24h cool down period is where this ends. I think it will get worse
it's not hard to imagine Google stating "we're removing this opt-out path because next to no-one uses it, and it will help streamline Android, which will protect the children!"
> but simple enough to barely be an inconvenience for anyone who cares enough and can go through it.
Any sources for this claim? I don't buy it.