Comment by jeroenhd
20 days ago
There's a reason Google is targeting a few specific countries with this first. Malware from APKs downloaded from the internet is more prominent in some countries than in others. The governments themselves are asking for this because educating the public has turned out to be an impossible task for them.
Still an awful solution that will get bypassed easily, of course. But there's more to this than "Google decided to be a bunch of dicks today".
The malware makers will use fake or stolen IDs.
I'm not saying this is a good idea, am I?
A lot of people are pretending there is no malware problem and that Google should just do nothing and move on. That's not helpful.
This bullshit needs to be aborted as soon as possible, but a solution for mobile malware is desperately needed. The crutch used on desktop, invasive antivirus, doesn't work on Android unless it comes from the OS manufacturer, so we need a new solution.