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.
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.
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.
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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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.
That does happen. You can see stuff like that on scam baiting videos all the time.
google doing their best to make me move to a different platform for my next phone.
anybody know of other options?
It feels that it is either Linux phones, or Fairphone, or GrapheneOS. We are somewhat fucked.
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 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
Google has already closed down AOSP a bit. They now publish the source code less frequently.
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
Motorola has Graphene OS soon.
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.
So now what’s is my motivation to move back to android from iPhone if they are gonna do the same bullshit as apple, hopefully some manufacturers switch to more open android versions like lineage or something
So it needs developer mode huh, plenty of apps dont work with that on, truly awful even if i can turn it back off after.
Come join us at /e/OS, we don’t have this https://e.foundation/
I already migrated to Graphene. Knowing my luck if I wouldn’t then Google would go through with this shit.
