KDE Connect removed from Google Play store for violating new policy on SMS

Post by simonh » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 11:57 AM UTC

kabacha wrote: post #44

Svoka wrote: post #27

I find it extremely scary to make business with Google. Their robot would get your account banned, all cloud, play and every other thing with it. Every hour it is banned would be lost money and lost customers. This is not my problem, really. It is Google's public image as I seen it soulless support for last 10 years, and stories like this pop up time to time. Too sad they pretty much locked in Android app market, and…

Ech at least on android you can easily install apps outside of google play. _I_ find it scary to make business with as you can be pretty much _snapped_ out of existance in a single decision.

Post by y0ghur7_xxx » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:01 PM UTC

westpfelia wrote: post #38

djsumdog wrote: post #34

My current phone has been falling apart for a while and I've already replaced the back 3 times and the camera. With the battery going out and the back starting to crack again under the case, I decided I'm getting sick of Android. My next device needs to be something I can easily run Plasma on. Maybe I'll pre-order a Purism phone. I want a real open source phone, similar to running a Linux distro on my PC in the late…

Sadly I think the Purism phone just was pushed back wasn't it?

Post by ForHackernews » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:14 PM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #13

wy6psk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is KDE Connect, not Snapchat. Joe Linuxonthedesktop has definitely heard of F-Droid.

Speaking as a KDE Connect user who's heard of F-Droid, I installed F-Droid, then deinstalled it. It was too noisy and intrusive. When I told it I didn't want to replace an app with its version it kept asking again and again, every day at least. Since then I've head that the F-Droid operators insist on signing all apps themselves, instead of the developers' signature. That's as bad as the TLS inteceptors that insist o…

Post by michaelt » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:15 PM UTC

vbsteven wrote: post #45

mgkimsal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I rebuilt the same application with the SMS feature removed and the Play Store Developer Console was very unclear and buggy on how to resolve the issue and get my app out of the rejected status." Holy cow I had the same issue. Ended up having to just make a brand new one with a new name. It was a horrible experience. A version on a beta channel had SMS permissions requested, but there was no way to get rid of it. Yo…

I was afraid of having to do exactly that, create a new app with a new name and move all of the customers over... I ended up fixing it eventually by somehow clearing all versions in alpha/beta channels and uploading a new fixed version without the SMS permission with increased version number multiple times, and then bubbling that up to production. For reference, we only used READ SMS permission in this app to improve…

  we only used READ SMS permission in this app
  to improve the phone number validation process

Post by kuschku » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 12:18 PM UTC

Iolaum wrote: post #18

Arnt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a KDE Connect user who's heard of F-Droid, I installed F-Droid, then deinstalled it. It was too noisy and intrusive. When I told it I didn't want to replace an app with its version it kept asking again and again, every day at least. Since then I've head that the F-Droid operators insist on signing all apps themselves, instead of the developers' signature. That's as bad as the TLS inteceptors that insist o…

Fdroid maintainers require shipped apk's to have 0 non-free components. The only way to ensure that is to build the apps themselves (so that they can verify code and control dependencies). This means that they can only use their own keys.