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> you can presumably create a US app store account with a VPN I don't think it's that simple, at least with Google the phone seems to see the country code of t

> you can presumably create a US app store account with a VPN I don't think it's that simple, at least with Google the phone seems to see the country code of the SIM card, or the mobile network it's connected to, to determine your "current country" for the Google Play Store. Maybe it will even ask you for a credit card number plus ZIP and country, that Google/Apple can confirm with your CC provider, if you say "Oh it's 90210 USA" and your CC billing address is 200000 Shanghai, your CC provider will say "verification failed". I remember just downloading the APK of an app I needed which was not available for my Google Play country from apkmirror.com (thank Allah for sideloading). It seems like the CCP asking Apple to ban these apps mean that they're getting more afraid about their leaky firewall, blocking them from being downloaded from the app store is another hurdle they've thought of for the Chinese citizenry.

gruez 3y ago
>I don't think it's that simple, at least with Google the phone seems to see the country code of the SIM card, or the mobile network it's connected to, to determine your "current country" for the Google Play Store eject your sim card then, or download an esim from another country and turn on airplane mode >Maybe it will even ask you for a credit card number plus ZIP and country, that Google/Apple can confirm with your CC provider, if you say "Oh it's 90210 USA" and your CC billing address is 200000 Shanghai, your CC provider will say "verification failed". apple explicitly has a "none" payment option[1] [1] https://www.tuneskit.com/images/resource/no-none-option-for-apple-id-payment.png https://www.tuneskit.com/images/resource/no-none-option-for-... >It seems like the CCP asking Apple to ban these apps mean that they're getting more afraid about their leaky firewall, blocking them from being downloaded from the app store is another hurdle they've thought of for the Chinese citizenry. Their firewall tech is top notch[2]. Getting past it is non-trivial (ie. you can't just buy nordvpn subscription and be on your way). Compared to that creating an alt apple account is easy. [2] https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentation/wu-mingshi https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentat...
- one-another-dev 3y ago
  The complexity of spoofing location with app store in iPhone : https://twitter.com/hbkirb/status/1781503147904741430 https://twitter.com/hbkirb/status/1781503147904741430 This is for the EU compliance. But it is an example for the difficulty spoofing location

gruez 3y ago

>I don't think it's that simple, at least with Google the phone seems to see the country code of the SIM card, or the mobile network it's connected to, to determine your "current country" for the Google Play Store eject your sim card then, or download an esim from another country and turn on airplane mode >Maybe it will even ask you for a credit card number plus ZIP and country, that Google/Apple can confirm with your CC provider, if you say "Oh it's 90210 USA" and your CC billing address is 200000 Shanghai, your CC provider will say "verification failed". apple explicitly has a "none" payment option[1] [1] https://www.tuneskit.com/images/resource/no-none-option-for-apple-id-payment.png https://www.tuneskit.com/images/resource/no-none-option-for-... >It seems like the CCP asking Apple to ban these apps mean that they're getting more afraid about their leaky firewall, blocking them from being downloaded from the app store is another hurdle they've thought of for the Chinese citizenry. Their firewall tech is top notch[2]. Getting past it is non-trivial (ie. you can't just buy nordvpn subscription and be on your way). Compared to that creating an alt apple account is easy. [2] https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentation/wu-mingshi https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentat...

one-another-dev 3y ago
The complexity of spoofing location with app store in iPhone : https://twitter.com/hbkirb/status/1781503147904741430 https://twitter.com/hbkirb/status/1781503147904741430 This is for the EU compliance. But it is an example for the difficulty spoofing location