Stop fucking calling it sideloading. It is called installing an app
I teach digital literacy and 99% of unsavory software I encounter on people’s phones come from the play store or app store
I will believe that they’re serious about protecting users when I see them do something about the crap ton of borderline scam solitaire and weather apps infesting their stores
Your wish is fulfilled. Google now requires the government id, full biometrics and shared gps location to publish apps in the store.
See, that is fine. If Google wants to have a safe and curated, high quality store, (which it doesn’t), it is very logical that it would want to have the origins of software very well identified.
AS LONG AS it provides a mechanism for users to access other sources of software.
They are doing the opposite, allow bullshit apps in the “safe store” while hindering the independents.
We desperately need a decently competent OSS phone OS, if possible with a compatibility layer for Android apps.
I mean, yeah. They do. Would it be finally enough to stop all scammers online? All in on a clear “No”.
To those who think it is a fair compromise: It is not.
Android already had one layer of this shit before. When installid freshly dowloaded apk, android would prompt you to confirm that the source of the apk is trusted. This was not like this before. Before you’d just install apk.
And I agree to a certain amount. But thing is, it was added for no specific reason. People who install apks form outside source, will keep doing it and they 99% of the time know what they are doing or being told to do so by someone who knows what they are doing.
Adding another layer to this wont solve the problem, except make users annoyed for 24h wait time. And this is only adding 1 layer now. Who the fuck knows what is going to be 1 year later. 5 years later?
The thing is, people who do it and trust others to say, “just do it” - are the crazy ones.
It’s like the bs Tech Talk in TikTok. Always telling you to run RegEdit and such… oof.
They also had a protection where you couldn’t install apks when on a phone call
“This is Android’s new ‘advanced flow’ for INSTALLING apps without verification”. Sideloading is such a bullshit term made only to confuse consumers. They can wrap that in sparkling wrapper, but it’s still security theater at best and definetly misleading. Apps from F-Droid or any other app ‘store’ are not any less safe than the ones at googles own offering.
Without verification by Google. I am very much capable of verifying the origin and trustworthiness of the apps I install.
It’s so weird that they don’t take comments on the android developer blog post… Almost like they think it’ll be hugely unpopular.
Meanwhile the scam apps and viruses in the damn play store: …
Exactly, scammers aren’t having people install unverified apks, they are sending people straight to the play store and they have the money to pay the verified dev process. It’s all automated and no single human checks applications. It is all based on paying.
Google is the epitome of living long enough to become the villain.
They changed their “don’t be evil” motto years ago. I guess they must have kept two thirds of it.
A motto was never going to stop them from going sour. Any corporation that gets large enough and is publicly traded is going to attract sociopaths, narcissists and other Patrick Bateman wannabes to the positions of leadership within the corp like sharks to chum. It is a matter of when that gradual shift from good people to bad people takes place, not if.
The problem is that our economy and corporate structures reward the scummiest people because they’re the best at making profits.
Do usual dev mode shit…
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You then have to confirm that you aren’t being coached/guided/instructed by a bad actor to turn off the security measures.
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This is followed by a device restart and re-authentication that “cuts off any remote access or active phone calls a scammer might be using to watch what you’re doing.”
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A required “Security wait” takes one day to “confirm that this is really you who’s making this change with our biometric authentication (fingerprint or face unlock) or device PIN.” This is a one-time wait.
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Afterwards, you can install apps from unverified developers indefinitely, while there’s also a 7-day “Turn on temporarily” option.
I don’t think the wait is necessary. If someone were to continue being scammed after a reboot, they’d continue to be scamme tomorrow. An additional education piece after the reboot would be more effective.
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“Sideloading”
Aka avoiding the monopoly app store with your own device
We should stop calling it sideloading as if it’s something bad. It’s just installing.
It’s my device FFS!
how DARE you threaten stockholder value like that !
;)
It’s a term few decades old, and means transferring files between local devices.
You download the app on your pc, you sideload it to your local device (your phone) using
adb sideload file.apk, and you use that installed app to upload pictures of your mom.Everyone now having internet access in those local devices means you can do the download on it directly, but for android, the process is still there and used whenever you install stuff not from the play store.
I usually download apk directly to my android devices and install from there, no pc or other device is needed. So your whenever is for me almost never.
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.
Does this actually happen? Or they just trying to manufacture consent to all this bullshit?
Do calls like that happen? Unfortunately, yes.
Is it a reason to lock down and enshittify every computing platform, every OS, every Internet-connected device until we own nothing, control nothing and can’t install what we please?
It’s an age old tactic of manipulation to start with something true, exaggerate the threat, and apply it everywhere possible.
age old
Yeah for sure. I have to deal with a lot of tech-support and similar scam victims, and I always wind up explaining that this con is as old as civilization at least, it’s just the location and props that are new.
Lure you in with a benefit or problem solved, ensure that you get lost or disoriented, manufacture fear/uncertainty/doubt, offer a way out, trap is set.
Once upon a time I had someone try to run this same scam on me in meatspace, a big ancient city. Offer a solution to a logistics problem, get me lost in the maze, create new problem of changed conditions, intimidate with new people arriving, and pressure with intense sales tactics on a bullshit product. I wasn’t actually lost so just walked away, curiosity satisfied, but some people would have lost a lot of money.
That does happen. You can see stuff like that on scam baiting videos all the time.
Well I’m sure we’ve all heard stories about it happening, and my FIL had someone walking him through a “Microsoft has detected a virus on your PC” scenario one time until he fucked up and lost the connection (fortunately)
they do happen yes
it’s very clear we have to escape Android and Google entirely, there is no other option.
Please donate to PostmarketOS if you have the means, it gives us a true alternative that is completely community owned, it just needs our support to become polished and to add support for more phones.
We have to support software that’s still made for us. While we still can.
How about a 24 hour waiting period for me to harden my OS before Google slurps up all my data.
Important to note ADB is still unaffected
google doing their best to make me move to a different platform for my next phone.
anybody know of other options?
Linux phones are about to get interesting.
I’ve heard that 15 years ago
15 years ago the world wasn’t looking for a maliciously compliant escape route.
I don’t think anything other than degoogled Android is mature enough to recommend. And it looks like degoogled androids might extinct soon.
What makes you say Degoogled Android might go extinct? Projects like LineageOS and GrapheneOS are still going strong. /e/OS, murenaOS, VollaOS and other similar phones have been coming out of the woodwork recently. I think DeGoogled Android is just getting started.
That is, unless, you mean Google is working hard to close down AOSP so the downstream DeGoogled projects don’t function anymore? Then yeah, I sadly have to agree.
Google has already closed down AOSP a bit. They now publish the source code less frequently.
Google seems to start cracking down on free android, I don’t really believe they want to just stop the ability to install apps on your regular android and be done with it. Once they get the taste for blood, they can’t stop
It feels that it is either Linux phones, or Fairphone, or GrapheneOS. We are somewhat fucked.
They already showed their hand. Doesn’t matter if they’ve backed down. My new phone is going to use GrapheneOS and if this shit trickles down (Graphene is still based on Android) I’m going full Linux phone.
Graphene has explicitly stated that it will never accept this as a part of their operating system
You can’t sideload on Linux
Yeah, it’s just called installing.
Installing. We just call it installing.
