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Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

danfabulich.medium.com

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Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#51

Post by twright0 »

ryandrake wrote: post #37
CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

I'd extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. Some examples: - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. - Nothing tied to your consumer accounts should be used for anything business related. - Your Amazon shopping account and your AWS account should defin…

> I'd extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. This should really go without saying. I’m sometimes shocked at the extent to which it has become normalized to mix up one’s personal accounts with work. I can’t count the number of times a colleague accidentally sent me an email using their personal account, or tex…

Firm agree on mixing work/personal contexts.

However, in practice, using "Sign in with Google" by default dramatically increases resilience to most failure modes for almost everyone without a sophisticated threat model.

> To save what? An additional password?

The average person does not manage their passwords in a sophisticated way; if someone is signing up for many different services, they are probably using the same password everywhere, or some simple enumeration scheme. Then, when some random forum or web service gets compromised (as they inevitably are), their password to everything is compromised - including Google! On the opposite end of the spectrum, if Google is the only service with a password, and everything else is driven by Google-owned SSO, that person is essentially immune to compromise; whatever I think about the company, I do believe in Google's security team to keep passwords safe and block dictionary attacks more than any other service on the internet.

And while we can evangelize setting up password managers and using strong random passwords everywhere, the truth of the matter is that many people simply cannot accomplish this. "Sign in with {Google, Facebook, Microsoft}" gets them 95% of the benefit at much higher reliability.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#52

Post by rexf »

genuine_smiles wrote: post #26
CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

I'd extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. Some examples: - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. - Nothing tied to your consumer accounts should be used for anything business related. - Your Amazon shopping account and your AWS account should defin…

> - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. I wouldn’t do this with Facebook. Creating a second account is against Facebook policy, and they may ban both accounts.

It seems like a risk with Google too. It's common to be logged into Google/Gmail with multiple Google accounts. Even with separate Google accounts, Google can tell they are related and could potentially ban them too.

A quick web search came up with Google's "associated account ban":

> "Associated account ban" means not just explicit account linkages, but also implicit ones, where a wife can be banned for the misbehavior of her husband

https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/ckoej1/googles_...

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#53

Post by cmeacham98 »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #48

> Google will never tell you why they banned you from AdSense/AdMob. (Honestly, it sort of makes sense that they share no evidence, because Google doesn’t want people to learn how Google detects click fraud.) No, I don't think that makes sense. Google is not sharing this information because they want to protect their own business, but in doing so, they are shifting all risk to the app developers. If you have a busine…

I'm not aware of any major business that publicizes this kind of information. Try going to your bank and ask them for details on how their anti-fraud system works.

The problem here is this imperfect click fraud ban can ricochet into your app getting banned too.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#54

Post by thaumasiotes »

ryandrake wrote: post #37
CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

I'd extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. Some examples: - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. - Nothing tied to your consumer accounts should be used for anything business related. - Your Amazon shopping account and your AWS account should defin…

> I'd extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. This should really go without saying. I’m sometimes shocked at the extent to which it has become normalized to mix up one’s personal accounts with work. I can’t count the number of times a colleague accidentally sent me an email using their personal account, or tex…

> Don’t even get me started on how entrenched “Sign In With [Company]” schemes have gained traction. Why deliberately have such a single point of failure? To save what? An additional password?

Well, no, it doesn't save a password. People use the same password across all their independent accounts.

Sign in with [Company] doesn't improve that, obviously, but there is the idea out there that [Company] might be doing a better job not leaking your password than the couple dozen sites that know it under the other system.

In other words, Sign in with [Company] is a way for a website to protect itself (from touching your password) at your expense. It's not there for you.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#56

Post by CGamesPlay »

dfabulich wrote: post #19
CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

I'd extend this even further: never use a single account for more than one purpose. Create a separate account at the same company for the other purpose. Some examples: - Every product/project you manage should be on a separate account on Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. - Nothing tied to your consumer accounts should be used for anything business related. - Your Amazon shopping account and your AWS account should defin…

(Author here.) This is excellent advice for consumer apps/products, (it's especially important to keep enterprise accounts fully separate from your individual consumer accounts), but it wouldn't have helped DroidScript in this case. DroidScript is a non-profit organization; when they signed up for Google AdMob and Google Play Store, they provided the same tax ID (their EIN) in both cases. Creating separate Google acc…

Yeah, you are right, and I don’t disagree with your article either. Our points are different lenses on the idea of account isolation.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#57

Post by themolecularman »

jaimex2 wrote: post #2

If there's a good alternative never use Google anything. The sole fact that there is no appeal system to account shutdowns and the way they just kill services at random should be enough reason for anyone.

> If there's a good alternative never use Google anything.

Brave instead of Chrome. Duck Duck Go instead of Google. Proton Mail instead of Gmail.

The only thing I haven't been able to replace is YouTube. That's a tricky one because it's the content creators that keep me locked into it.

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#58

Post by Larrikin »

themolecularman wrote: post #57
jaimex2 wrote: post #2

If there's a good alternative never use Google anything. The sole fact that there is no appeal system to account shutdowns and the way they just kill services at random should be enough reason for anyone.

> If there's a good alternative never use Google anything. Brave instead of Chrome. Duck Duck Go instead of Google. Proton Mail instead of Gmail. The only thing I haven't been able to replace is YouTube. That's a tricky one because it's the content creators that keep me locked into it.

Why a chromium browser instead of Firefox?

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#59

Post by 55555 »

blibble wrote: post #47
o-__-o wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Creating a subsidiary business for every type of Google account you have would be quite expensive Costs roughly $1000/yr to run a properly sheltered LLC. Just saying, that’s a low barrier to overcome for any company turning modest revenue.

why so expensive? in the UK it's £13/year (under $20)

It can be much cheaper in other good states. $250 to 400 yearly rings a bell for WY, NV, DL

Re: Google can ban your Android app if they think you’ve clicked on your own ads

#60

Post by DistressedDrone »

MattGaiser wrote: post #38

Is there a reason Google doesn’t offer a premium support tier for stuff like this? There are millions of dollars flowing through Android to some companies. Paying $100 a month to always get to deal with a human seems like something that would be in demand. I get that moderation can’t scale on the cheap, but with the dollar values involved, it doesn’t need to for the high paying customers.

Judging solely from the outside, Google seems to believe that anything that can't be automated isn't worth doing.

On the one hand I understand that their target markets are composed of billions of people. On the other hand, it's a strong contributor to their "Google is evil" reputation. The fact that you can never speak to a human is probably saving them money, but it seems so consistent and important to them that I'm not convinced it's entirely about the money. There has to be a lot of people very high up who are totally uninterested in the idea of customer service.

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