Comment by Taterr

The difference is that Google doesn’t mind scam apps being on the Play Store.

Because we hear so many stories where the scammer directed their target to install an app so that their scam works

I know a lot more people that install newpipe than people that got scammed by any means, and have never heard of anyone being asked to install an app by a scammer

You don't need to side load a specific app with malware. All you do is tell the person to go to the Google Play Store and install any Anydesk. Heck, even the reviews for that app point out that people that are scamming you often tell you to install it. Kelly Walters' review from '23 has 215,000 upvotes for warning people about this.

> They seem to be actually implementing a lot of high effort scam protection features recently in android

This all happened recently because a court case was recently decided that broke Google's monopoly on play store money flows (Google must now allow alternate play stores). These recent changes are simply to try to prop up as much of their play store profit center as they can by restricting what you can do with the computer you purchased.

Do you also believe mass surveillance is necessary to protect children?

It's pretty easy to make up a reasonable sounding excuse for something you do for your own profit as a company. If they don't even provide any statistic on how frequent these scams are, it can be just words

Also, if your bank 2fa code is in your notifications, you should switch 2fa methods to something other than sms, or switch banks.

I wouldn't be surprised if the people at google implementing this genuinely believe this to be the case. It was the same thing with AMP, the people doing it really seemed to believe it was entirely a good thing and there were no negative consequences whatsoever. But it doesn't really matter when the thing also blatantly concentrates power within themselves that can later be used to their own interests.

(Here's another reason it's a bad idea: scammers tend to be very good at navigating the roadblocks you put in to do a thing, often moreso than the people who legitimately want to do the thing, so I wouldn't be surprised if the scammers still have a healthy supply of malicious apps now signed by google. If they can't keep malware off of the play store where they see the malicious code, why do they think they can stop scammers registering as developers to sign their malware?)

There will always be scammers who through human engineering get people to transfer money or hand over their jewellery.

(My bank doesn't use SMS by the way everything goes through the official app with biometrics).

First we need to understand what the root cause of the problem really is then we can discuss solutions. All we've been told is that "Android users are getting scammed, we are going to make side loading impossible". There is no clear cause and effect established, no data shared with the public on what percent of scams were caused by sideloaded apps and how the scams actually operate for us to be able to accept the solution.

Look at the attack vectors that are actually being used, and address them specifically, with minimally invasive measures.

If the problem is apps that allow remote control of your device, that people can be socially engineered into installing, put up barriers to gaining just that permissions. That approach would actually help motivate the problem (as scammers can now just use Google-approved apps for such things).

If the problem is ads that are pushing scams, Google could start with eradicating them from their own network. They seem to be the primary source. And, god forbid, perhaps even offer an ad blocker integrated in Android. (Yeah, I know.)

If the problem is scammers pretending to be a friend or family member in need of help though social apps, Google could force these apps to help users identify these cases (using local privacy friendly heuristics is course) for inclusion in the Play Store. And no, they wouldn't be able to demand the same from apps installed from elsewhere, but that should be firmly outside of their sphere of responsibility. And casual users would be extremely like to stick with the default app store anyhow.

Note that all three of these proposals provide a measure of safety from the problems they are addressing much larger than what Google is attempting by banning all non-Google-authorized applications.

The problem with that thought is that Goole isn't creating a good solution, it's creating this specific one.