KDE Connect removed from Google Play store for violating new policy on SMS • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by lima » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 3:44 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #33

Horror stories like this one crop up every now and then. The other time they locked all the G Suite accounts of an entire company just because one of the employees has made a couple of bad chargebacks for some Android apps on his private account that was supplied as a recovery email for his company account. And they didn't even provide a reason, the company had to investigate and find out on their own.

That particular story was completely made up. It was implausible to begin with, given that G Suite is a business product with contracts that doesn't just get "banned", and Google confirmed that they weren't aware of any such incident and failed to get in touch with the author.

This comment is a great example on the effectiveness of spreading unsubstantiated FUD.

Last discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17115643

Google response: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banne...

> The original poster on Reddit (OP) did not identify him/herself or the customer account. We have made several attempts to reach out to the OP through PM, but have yet to receive a response. (If the OP or someone from his/her company is reading this, please get in touch with me. We have tried to identify the customer based on the information in the original post, including an extensive review of recent support cases, but have not found any cases resembling the description.

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

#122

Post by jumbopapa » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

jraph wrote: post #115

_ylmx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any other great apps on F-Droid? I'm using all of the above except AdAway and: - Orgzly: Org-mode brought to your phone. I use it for capturing TODOs and push notifications for reminders. - Revolution IRC: IRC Client - Syncthing: Syncs files between my computer and phone. Mostly used for .org files - Goodtime: Pomodoro technique time-management - Loop Habit Tracker: Track habits (reading, exercise, etc.) - Slide for…

A selection of F-Droid apps: - AFWall+ (firewall, useful to block traffic to limit mobile data usage when I still need to enable it) - Amaze (File Manager) - AndIodine (Iodine client, use internet through wifi guarded by captive portals that still let DNS queries pass) - Barcode Scanner (scan QR and bar codes, share things through QR codes) - Clementine Remote (control the Clementine music player) - Draw (to write sc…

Wow, this is an amazing list! Thank you for taking the time to compile it. I'll be trying a number of these out.

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

#123

Post by phillc73 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

jraph wrote: post #115

_ylmx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any other great apps on F-Droid? I'm using all of the above except AdAway and: - Orgzly: Org-mode brought to your phone. I use it for capturing TODOs and push notifications for reminders. - Revolution IRC: IRC Client - Syncthing: Syncs files between my computer and phone. Mostly used for .org files - Goodtime: Pomodoro technique time-management - Loop Habit Tracker: Track habits (reading, exercise, etc.) - Slide for…

A selection of F-Droid apps: - AFWall+ (firewall, useful to block traffic to limit mobile data usage when I still need to enable it) - Amaze (File Manager) - AndIodine (Iodine client, use internet through wifi guarded by captive portals that still let DNS queries pass) - Barcode Scanner (scan QR and bar codes, share things through QR codes) - Clementine Remote (control the Clementine music player) - Draw (to write sc…

If we're making an F-Droid list and checking it twice:

- FreeOTP+ for 2FA

- Wireguard for use with Mullvad VPN

- AnkiDroid flashcards

- AntennaPod for podcasts

- Telegram for messaging

- Twidere twitter client

Plus a few already noted above.

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

#124

Post by magduf » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

kevinventullo wrote: post #108

simonh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True that. It's the blessing and curse of app stores. On iOS everyone complains there's only one App Store. On Android everyone complains the vendors and networks keep pre-loading their multifarious crappy app stores. People, eh?

The pre-loading doesn't bother me as much as them making it impossible to delete this bloatware without rooting the phone.

Yeah, exactly. I honestly wouldn't care much if they preloaded a bunch of crap so they can get kickbacks (which would probably translate to a slightly lower-priced phone, due to all the competition in the Android phone market), as long as I could just go delete it like any other app.

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

#125

Post by magduf » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

travisgriggs wrote: post #116

skolsuper wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very common in rural Asia. Users share apks via P2P file sharing. Typically one person in the village will set up everyone's phone for them. Usually with all apps preloaded, but they're actually quite savvy about adding and removing apps once they get going, since they're on phones with such low internal storage. If you want to make it into these markets, you need to make your app side-loadable

But is that a model that producers can build a business on?

With a few billion people in Asia, probably.

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

#126

Post by magduf » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

vbsteven wrote: post #3

A couple weeks ago Google removed one of my apps for the same violation. 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. I spent the better part of 2 hours just to get everything up and running again and it's frustrating to know that you cannot easily contact anyone @ Goog…

>it's frustrating to know that you cannot easily contact anyone @ Google to ask for help.

This is completely normal for anything with Google.

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

#127

Post by mindslight » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #111

Dahoon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I decided I'm getting sick of Android. How does Android and cracked hardware fit together? No such thing as android hardware. Just buy a better one next time. >I want a real open source phone Purism isn't "real open source". Lots of locked down proprietary binary blobs in it and no way to no use them (modem for one). If you want it because of FOSS installing Ubuntu or LineageOS on any other phone would be just as go…

> Purism isn't "real open source". Lots of locked down proprietary binary blobs in it Could you cite this, please? With regard to the modem, its inner workings may be opaque, but it is isolated from the system and communicates over a bus (whereas ordinarily the modem on a mobile phone uses shared memory), which is what security-conscious open phone enthusiasts have been waiting years for. What other phone will give t…

> What other phone will give that to you?

Samsung Exynos variants - starlte, herolte, etc.

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

#128

Post by magduf » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

jumbopapa wrote: post #122

jraph wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A selection of F-Droid apps: - AFWall+ (firewall, useful to block traffic to limit mobile data usage when I still need to enable it) - Amaze (File Manager) - AndIodine (Iodine client, use internet through wifi guarded by captive portals that still let DNS queries pass) - Barcode Scanner (scan QR and bar codes, share things through QR codes) - Clementine Remote (control the Clementine music player) - Draw (to write sc…

Wow, this is an amazing list! Thank you for taking the time to compile it. I'll be trying a number of these out.

There's some apps on this list which are in the regular Google Play store. OsmAnd and Google Sky Maps are ones I use from the Play store.

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

#129

Post by mtnGoat » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

gabbygab wrote: post #106

stevehawk wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the reasons I'm convinced that Google et al don't hire the best engineers/programmers, but really just the best interviewers.

Or maybe they hire the best engineers who interview well? Being a great engineer and being a great interviewer aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. You can be both. Also, after 20+ years in business, google engineers are still highly respected and sought after by every company for their tech expertise. If google didn't hire the best, that luster would have faded a long time ago. Google has always been great at tech…

"sought after by every company"

certainly not sought after by my company, and i hate to speak for others, but i can name at least a handful of others where having any of the FANGs will usually get your resume circular filed. :x

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

#130

Post by vetinari » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

kevinventullo wrote: post #108

simonh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True that. It's the blessing and curse of app stores. On iOS everyone complains there's only one App Store. On Android everyone complains the vendors and networks keep pre-loading their multifarious crappy app stores. People, eh?

The pre-loading doesn't bother me as much as them making it impossible to delete this bloatware without rooting the phone.

By rooting and deleting apps , or any other modification of the /system partition, you are making it impossible to apply any patch released by the manufacturer (it is a binary delta of the volume).

Consider disabling the apps; if the manufacturer doesn't allow disabling the app through Settings, you can always do it via adb. When you disable the app, the system will ignore it and behave as if it wouldn't be there. You can't get any additional benefit from the deleting, you won't gain any additional free space, as no app can write to /system partition for the above reason anyway.