Worse: this flow runs entirely through Google Play Services, not the Android OS. Google can change it, tighten it, or kill it at any time, with no OS update required and no consent needed.
And as of today, it hasn't shipped in any beta, preview, or canary build.
It exists only as a blog post and some mockups.(Or at least, that's their take on this. You can choose to read between the lines, or not, as to whether they have other motivations also.)
That's why there's a requirement for restarting the phone and waiting 24 hours.
The restart ends the connection for any remote-access software or phone call that might be driving the operation -- and the 24 hour wait period breaks the "urgency" part of the scam that prevents other people who know better from stopping the vicim from continuing.
But for 1 person wanting to run their own software there are hundreds of people with the potential to install malware/crapware/etc
(Also note that "crapware" describes basically every app you find in google's store. I try on occasion, when nobody made an open source this-or-that, and it's such a minefield. If that's the thing you're trying to avoid, I don't know how you could possibly feel positive about a requirement to only use the Play Store for the tech-illiterate)
Yes, because this whole procedure is new
> Also note that "crapware" describes basically every app you find in google's store
Go back to emacs then I guess
The malware issue that the flow is designed to mitigate is a very real problem. Perhaps there is a better way, but it's not immediately clear what that is.
That is, fine by me. I can wait for 24 hours once in a few years when I acquire a new mobile phone.
Users who use F-Droid are already not as lay. If you distribute stuff that Play Store would ban, your users are likely not as lay, too.
Yes, it's inconvenient, but I see it as a good-faith attempt to limit exposure of lay users to scams, not some power grab.
Automated bans can be an issue, but that's an edge case. Google already had the functionality to 'revoke' an app if ordered to do so by a legal authority.
It is much more important to make a real world attack - something that is draining wallets of ordinary people across Thailand/Brazil/SEA in general - harder to achieve. One thing is a political goal of some people in the west, the other is an ordinary person not having the money to feed themselves because a scammer stole it all.
Google doesn't have the ability to change the way banking apps work with regards to transferring money from one account to another in Malaysia/Brazil/Thailand. That would be a matter for the national Governments. This is the best approach available.
* people who know what they're doing
* people who are being victimized
Look, I can't locally install a web extension I wrote on an open-source Firefox browser, because security. I have to install a Developer Edition, or get the extension reviewed and signed by Mozilla, for the very same reasons of thwarting scammers. Is this stifling, or is it making my browser not mine? Is anybody making a big deal out of that?
The world we inhabit is not always friendly. It has a ton of determined and sophisticated bad actors, and a lot of people with less technical savvy than you and me. We have to deal with that, instead of being cantankerous.
But it's limited to a one-time action, not encumbered by additional papers or payment. I don't foresee any trouble using F-Droid (which I use a lot) after I have dismissed the scary screens and confirmed that I know what I'm doing.
Because as a reader to this forum, you're probably more tech savvy that the average person. Moreover this type of scam seems to be more common in Asia than the West, see:
https://cdn.economistdatateam.com/videos/cyber-scams/fake-vi...
https://www.economist.com/interactive/asia/2026/04/10/scam-i...
They convince users to download a "government app", grant it accessibility permissions, then use that to take over their phone and drain their bank accounts.
>Especially when it affects safer app repositories like F-droid more than the cesspit that is the official Play store.
Where do you draw the line? If you whitelist f-droid, do you have to whitelist third party f-droid repos too? What about other app "stores" like obtanium? Moreover f-droid being less of a "cesspool" is likely because its reach is smaller, not because it has better moderation.
Oh yeah, I forgot they're bound to some code of rules they follow. Scammers, of all people.
I can think of plenty of scams that take days in the making. Even the classic "redeem" ones have people hooked in the thing for like a week ...
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/f-droid-security-issues/
And most Android banking malware is distributed through unsafe sideload installs (as opposed to much safer Gatekeeper-style installs, which is what is coming) and are fed to victims through complex attacks involving obtaining a victim's personal information and calling them while credibly pretending to be a local authority or a bank representative. You can read about this wherever you get news about cyber crime.
This is a scourge in South East Asia and Google can do some good here. The only cost is whining from non-technical people. Everyone else will go pay $25 or whatever and sign their app.
Somehow bank vaults and heroin storage boxes don’t take this long.