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It's pretty easy for the developer to believe "whatever they do is legit" when they aren't shown an example of how they violated the policy. Could you imagine

It's pretty easy for the developer to believe "whatever they do is legit" when they aren't shown an example of how they violated the policy. Could you imagine a world where a traffic cop pulled you over, issued you a ticket, and when you asked what you did wrong they said "You violated the policies regarding safe driving and expected behaviors". Your license is now revoked. All the information required has been provided to you. So maybe you are a terrible driver who deserves to lose a license, or maybe you just did something like parking in front of a mail box, a behavior you would adjust if you realized it was against the rules. No one should be expected to have a perfect mental map of the extremely long terms and conditions agreements and how they map to every real word situation.

on_and_off 7y ago
I agree that they should do a better job at explaining issues. My understanding is that at first the number of apps where the violation is unclear was so low that it was not worth it. IIRC Google has announced that they are going to provide more info in the future on what the issues are. however the link in the article is pretty clear : https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/deceptive-behavior/#!?zippy_activeEl=dishonest-behavior#dishonest-behavior https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/dec... (even though it does not mention which part of the app exactly violates these rules) And I disagree on the fact that the TOS are unreadable : https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy/#!?modal_active=none https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy/#!?mo... Google could improve devs relationships for sure, but these are pretty clear. FWIW, I had several strikes as well, because of a permission used by an unpublished app on a beta channel :/. The whole process of getting the account reinstated was pretty easy in that case. I am kinda curious to scrape the op app and look at what might have got them in trouble, I might give it a go if I have enough time.
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  Thank you, that's good info. Please report back if you have time to scrape the app and give us that perspective. Is it easy to scrape the app now that it isn't in the store anymore? I have a hunch the violation will be something to do with him trying to cut costs on the Google Places API.
  - on_and_off 7y ago
    By scrape I meant that there are some sites allowing to download apks from Google play They usually cache the apks for a couple of days so that would have been a way to download it. And after that, I would have looked at the app manifest (it contains all the permissions that the app might want to use, so there might be some interesting stuff there) and maybe use it. I don't plan to look at the bytecode for shady behavior .. that's not my forte and I am not interested enough to spend one week looking at bytecode. edit : I have just opened the article again to get the app package name .. looks like it got reinstated. But no comment of the author as of why it was removed.
    - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
      Ya, looks like it got updated again and he doesn't have to make any changes. Google thinking he was in violation was an error on their part.

on_and_off 7y ago

I agree that they should do a better job at explaining issues. My understanding is that at first the number of apps where the violation is unclear was so low that it was not worth it. IIRC Google has announced that they are going to provide more info in the future on what the issues are. however the link in the article is pretty clear : https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/deceptive-behavior/#!?zippy_activeEl=dishonest-behavior#dishonest-behavior https://play.google.com/about/privacy-security-deception/dec... (even though it does not mention which part of the app exactly violates these rules) And I disagree on the fact that the TOS are unreadable : https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy/#!?modal_active=none https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy/#!?mo... Google could improve devs relationships for sure, but these are pretty clear. FWIW, I had several strikes as well, because of a permission used by an unpublished app on a beta channel :/. The whole process of getting the account reinstated was pretty easy in that case. I am kinda curious to scrape the op app and look at what might have got them in trouble, I might give it a go if I have enough time.

ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
Thank you, that's good info. Please report back if you have time to scrape the app and give us that perspective. Is it easy to scrape the app now that it isn't in the store anymore? I have a hunch the violation will be something to do with him trying to cut costs on the Google Places API.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  By scrape I meant that there are some sites allowing to download apks from Google play They usually cache the apks for a couple of days so that would have been a way to download it. And after that, I would have looked at the app manifest (it contains all the permissions that the app might want to use, so there might be some interesting stuff there) and maybe use it. I don't plan to look at the bytecode for shady behavior .. that's not my forte and I am not interested enough to spend one week looking at bytecode. edit : I have just opened the article again to get the app package name .. looks like it got reinstated. But no comment of the author as of why it was removed.
  - ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    Ya, looks like it got updated again and he doesn't have to make any changes. Google thinking he was in violation was an error on their part.