8 ms·

Yes, that's correct, and yes it's a massive violation of the terms. Aurora Store also lets you use your own Google account, which is also outside of Google's te

Yes, that's correct, and yes it's a massive violation of the terms. Aurora Store also lets you use your own Google account, which is also outside of Google's terms. But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this, so the entire setup is outside of Google's terms

jraph 3y ago
and without using something personal like your email address to download programs, which should be granted and was before mobile OSes. And still is on regular computers.
- esperent 3y ago
  That's not really true, you can make a throwaway Gmail account in about 5 minutes. Make one per Android device, throw the login details into a password manager and forget about it. I've done this for several Android devices now and never run into any issues. Ironically when I tried to set up a legitimate Gmail account for my business and used it to set up several accounts, within few days it got locked with no recourse for unlocking - there was a comment box where I could beg for an unlocking, never even got a response though. So Gmail is only for throwaway accounts from now on.
  - novok 3y ago
    Is it possible without a phone number or other forms of near PII?
    - oaththrowaway 3y ago
      No
    - charcircuit 3y ago
      Yes, I have created several Google accounts without having to give real PII (Google requires a first name, last name, and a birthday)
      - Scion9066 3y ago
        Have you tried it recently? I believe they require a phone number now.
        charcircuit 3y ago
        I've done it within the last year.
        justinclift 3y ago
        And it didn't ask for your phone number? Maybe it's location specific then or something...
        charcircuit 3y ago
        Nope. It is likely dependent on your IP reputation. If your IP has bad reputation they are likely to be more strict.
    - dhx 3y ago
      Yes, if you control for your source IP address. For example, I couldn't find anything from a quick search on whether Tor exit nodes are blocked (or use requires other PII to be supplied). All you get asked today (at least in Australia on a residential ISP) is a first name, last name, password, date of birth and gender (includes "prefer not to say"). Years ago I think you were correct, a phone number and SMS verification check was mandated, and each phone number could only be used so many times on different accounts. [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/gmail-without-phone-number-3072889/ https://www.androidauthority.com/gmail-without-phone-number-...
      - super256 3y ago
        I still need a phone number if I don’t sign up with a residential IP.
      - mid-kid 3y ago
        No, I'm still required to provide a phone number. This has something to do with my browser/system/ip fingerprint, because a friend of mine can make a google account for me from his googled phone on chrome just fine, yet when I try to log into it from my degoogled phone on firefox from my place, it asks for a phone number. It's about as awful as discord, who also locks account creation behind providing a phone number when an account is created from my residential IP. It almost feels like I've tripped some prevention mechanisms that all these companies are sharing and I have no idea of how to get my "goodness" score back up.
  - jraph 3y ago
    > you can make a throwaway Gmail account in about 5 minutes You should not have too, though. And as the discussion shows, Google requiring a phone number depends on luck.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    When two postal-code locations (e.g., day and night, home and work) are sufficient to specifically identify 90% of the population, and with Android devices being infested with location-tracking capabilities (above and beyond GPS), creating a pseudonymous account != hiding your identity from Google (or whomever else it shares data with, intentionally/willingly or otherwise). As I've noted previously (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30953159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30953159>), I recall but cannot find the 2-ZIP-code example, though a paper describing four location points IDing 95% of the population uniquely is here: <https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01376 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01376> ZIP + gender + date of birth is another highly-effective identifier, with 87% accuracy: "What Information is "Personally Identifiable"?", by Seth Schoen: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/what-information-personally-identifiable https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/what-information-perso...> Latanya Sweeney, Computational Disclosure Control: A Primer on Data Privacy Protection (Thesis, 1977, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) <https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/sweeney-thesis-draft.pdf https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priv...> "ZIP ruled personally identifying in California" (2011) <https://www.identityblog.com/?p=1168 https://www.identityblog.com/?p=1168>
chasil 3y ago
It is quite convenient both from the perspective of a stock Kindle Fire (commercial Android), and for LineageOS (non-commercial, unlocked, root available). It will also indicate if the app requires Google Mobile Services, which would preclude correct functionality outside of MicroG or alternate implementations.
- tssva 3y ago
  > It is quite convenient both from the perspective of a stock Kindle Fire (commercial Android) You can easily install the Google Play store on Kindle Fire tablets. It is installed on both the tablets in my household.
ReadCarlBarks 3y ago
>the only way to get apps [...] without [...] Google Play Services is this That's not true. You can download APKs from sites like APKPure (which has been a top search result for "[app name] APK" for many years on... Google).
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  Yes but: - it's harder to trust apkpure than aurora - apkpure has a lot of ads - apkpure has some outdated packages - apkpure is missing packages
  - als0 3y ago
    Why is Aurora more trustworthy?
    - BiteCode_dev 3y ago
      The aurora client is open source, and you can see it fetches directly from the app store. apkpure is proprietary and store the apk in a intermediary opaque server. So basically they can inject pretty much anything in the packages you install, and it's much harder to check than aurora if they do.
      - reaperducer 3y ago
        The aurora client is open source, and you can see it fetches directly from the app store. Am I correct to assume that you have to compile it yourself in order to keep this trust? Otherwise, there's no way to know if the binary being distributed alongside the source fetches from the same place, and we're right back to untrusted apps.
        Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
        Fdroid compiles it not aurora themselves. So you just have to trust f-droid. (which I do)
      - 3y ago
2h 3y ago
> But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this No, that's not true: https://github.com/4cq2/googleplay https://github.com/4cq2/googleplay
- yoshamano 3y ago
  You're not wrong, but that method is way more involved in every way. - You need a PC to run GooglePlay - You need to install Golang on that PC - You need a Google Account - You need to sign into the actual Google Play Store from a real or virtual device using that account - You need to know the Google Play Store package name (com.google.android.youtube) instead of just YouTube - You then have to transfer the APK to your Android device and install it. - You have to manually monitor your collection of apps on your device to see if there are updates and then go through the same process again to get the updated version. With Aurora Store I had to - Install F-Droid from https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/ - Install Aurora Store from within F-Droid - Open Aurora Store where it logs me in with a random Google Account from their pool of accounts. - Search for whatever app I want to install. - Tap Install. - For updates I tap on the Updates button and then tap Install All.
  - 2h 3y ago
    > You're not wrong, but that method is way more involved in every way I didn't say it was an easy way, I said it was another way. and you dont need a golang environment to run, only to build.
    - yoshamano 3y ago
      Unless I'm mistaken, there are no binary releases so you have to build it to use it. I mostly wrote up that response because you took the time to post the link three different times in this thread, but there wasn't much elaboration about what was involved or why GooglePlay should be considered an alternative to Aurora Store.
      - svnpenn 3y ago
ignoramous 3y ago
> But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this, so the entire setup is outside of Google's terms Some might argue adversarial interoperability is fair game: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20133151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20133151
yyyk 3y ago
> the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store There's also Raccon: https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/ https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/
WeylandYutani 3y ago
I wonder if apkmirror is against Google terms? Use it to download old versions of apps.

jraph 3y ago

and without using something personal like your email address to download programs, which should be granted and was before mobile OSes. And still is on regular computers.

esperent 3y ago
That's not really true, you can make a throwaway Gmail account in about 5 minutes. Make one per Android device, throw the login details into a password manager and forget about it. I've done this for several Android devices now and never run into any issues. Ironically when I tried to set up a legitimate Gmail account for my business and used it to set up several accounts, within few days it got locked with no recourse for unlocking - there was a comment box where I could beg for an unlocking, never even got a response though. So Gmail is only for throwaway accounts from now on.
- novok 3y ago
  Is it possible without a phone number or other forms of near PII?
  - oaththrowaway 3y ago
    No
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    Yes, I have created several Google accounts without having to give real PII (Google requires a first name, last name, and a birthday)
    - Scion9066 3y ago
      Have you tried it recently? I believe they require a phone number now.
      - charcircuit 3y ago
        I've done it within the last year.
        justinclift 3y ago
        And it didn't ask for your phone number? Maybe it's location specific then or something...
        charcircuit 3y ago
        Nope. It is likely dependent on your IP reputation. If your IP has bad reputation they are likely to be more strict.
  - dhx 3y ago
    Yes, if you control for your source IP address. For example, I couldn't find anything from a quick search on whether Tor exit nodes are blocked (or use requires other PII to be supplied). All you get asked today (at least in Australia on a residential ISP) is a first name, last name, password, date of birth and gender (includes "prefer not to say"). Years ago I think you were correct, a phone number and SMS verification check was mandated, and each phone number could only be used so many times on different accounts. [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/gmail-without-phone-number-3072889/ https://www.androidauthority.com/gmail-without-phone-number-...
    - super256 3y ago
      I still need a phone number if I don’t sign up with a residential IP.
    - mid-kid 3y ago
      No, I'm still required to provide a phone number. This has something to do with my browser/system/ip fingerprint, because a friend of mine can make a google account for me from his googled phone on chrome just fine, yet when I try to log into it from my degoogled phone on firefox from my place, it asks for a phone number. It's about as awful as discord, who also locks account creation behind providing a phone number when an account is created from my residential IP. It almost feels like I've tripped some prevention mechanisms that all these companies are sharing and I have no idea of how to get my "goodness" score back up.
- jraph 3y ago
  > you can make a throwaway Gmail account in about 5 minutes You should not have too, though. And as the discussion shows, Google requiring a phone number depends on luck.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  When two postal-code locations (e.g., day and night, home and work) are sufficient to specifically identify 90% of the population, and with Android devices being infested with location-tracking capabilities (above and beyond GPS), creating a pseudonymous account != hiding your identity from Google (or whomever else it shares data with, intentionally/willingly or otherwise). As I've noted previously (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30953159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30953159>), I recall but cannot find the 2-ZIP-code example, though a paper describing four location points IDing 95% of the population uniquely is here: <https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01376 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01376> ZIP + gender + date of birth is another highly-effective identifier, with 87% accuracy: "What Information is "Personally Identifiable"?", by Seth Schoen: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/what-information-personally-identifiable https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/what-information-perso...> Latanya Sweeney, Computational Disclosure Control: A Primer on Data Privacy Protection (Thesis, 1977, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) <https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/sweeney-thesis-draft.pdf https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/priv...> "ZIP ruled personally identifying in California" (2011) <https://www.identityblog.com/?p=1168 https://www.identityblog.com/?p=1168>

chasil 3y ago

It is quite convenient both from the perspective of a stock Kindle Fire (commercial Android), and for LineageOS (non-commercial, unlocked, root available). It will also indicate if the app requires Google Mobile Services, which would preclude correct functionality outside of MicroG or alternate implementations.

tssva 3y ago
> It is quite convenient both from the perspective of a stock Kindle Fire (commercial Android) You can easily install the Google Play store on Kindle Fire tablets. It is installed on both the tablets in my household.

ReadCarlBarks 3y ago

>the only way to get apps [...] without [...] Google Play Services is this That's not true. You can download APKs from sites like APKPure (which has been a top search result for "[app name] APK" for many years on... Google).

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Yes but: - it's harder to trust apkpure than aurora - apkpure has a lot of ads - apkpure has some outdated packages - apkpure is missing packages
- als0 3y ago
  Why is Aurora more trustworthy?
  - BiteCode_dev 3y ago
    The aurora client is open source, and you can see it fetches directly from the app store. apkpure is proprietary and store the apk in a intermediary opaque server. So basically they can inject pretty much anything in the packages you install, and it's much harder to check than aurora if they do.
    - reaperducer 3y ago
      The aurora client is open source, and you can see it fetches directly from the app store. Am I correct to assume that you have to compile it yourself in order to keep this trust? Otherwise, there's no way to know if the binary being distributed alongside the source fetches from the same place, and we're right back to untrusted apps.
      - Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
        Fdroid compiles it not aurora themselves. So you just have to trust f-droid. (which I do)
    - 3y ago

2h 3y ago

> But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this No, that's not true: https://github.com/4cq2/googleplay https://github.com/4cq2/googleplay

yoshamano 3y ago
You're not wrong, but that method is way more involved in every way. - You need a PC to run GooglePlay - You need to install Golang on that PC - You need a Google Account - You need to sign into the actual Google Play Store from a real or virtual device using that account - You need to know the Google Play Store package name (com.google.android.youtube) instead of just YouTube - You then have to transfer the APK to your Android device and install it. - You have to manually monitor your collection of apps on your device to see if there are updates and then go through the same process again to get the updated version. With Aurora Store I had to - Install F-Droid from https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/ - Install Aurora Store from within F-Droid - Open Aurora Store where it logs me in with a random Google Account from their pool of accounts. - Search for whatever app I want to install. - Tap Install. - For updates I tap on the Updates button and then tap Install All.
- 2h 3y ago
  > You're not wrong, but that method is way more involved in every way I didn't say it was an easy way, I said it was another way. and you dont need a golang environment to run, only to build.
  - yoshamano 3y ago
    Unless I'm mistaken, there are no binary releases so you have to build it to use it. I mostly wrote up that response because you took the time to post the link three different times in this thread, but there wasn't much elaboration about what was involved or why GooglePlay should be considered an alternative to Aurora Store.
    - svnpenn 3y ago

ignoramous 3y ago

> But the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store without installing the entire set of Google Play Services is this, so the entire setup is outside of Google's terms Some might argue adversarial interoperability is fair game: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20133151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20133151

yyyk 3y ago

> the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store There's also Raccon: https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/ https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/

WeylandYutani 3y ago

I wonder if apkmirror is against Google terms? Use it to download old versions of apps.