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It's not just getting a DUNS number. You also need to consent to having your home address (no PO box or virtual mailbox, needs to be a physical address for your
by streptomycin 1y ago
It's not just getting a DUNS number. You also need to consent to having your home address (no PO box or virtual mailbox, needs to be a physical address for your "business") listed publicly on the DUNS website and on all your Google Play Store app pages.
Other app stores are similar, so probably it's some dumb government regulation.
- cyberax 1y agoHome address? They asked me for an address in a commercially zoned district.
- streptomycin 1y agoThey didn't explicitly ask for a home address, just a physical address. But for a hobbyist dev, home address is probably all you have so effectively that's what they're asking for. Or for you to rent an office somewhere, which I guess is what they wanted you to do by asking for a commercially zoned adddress.
- bcye 1y agoIt seems that is only the case should you choose to monitise your app, which is fair? https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/13628312?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
- olalonde 1y agoNo it wouldn't be "fair" and it's not just if you want to monetize your app. D-U-N-S number is required for developer account creation regardless of whether you plan to monetize or not.
- bcye 1y agoI'm referring to the developer address for individual accounts, is there a misunderstanding? DUNS is only required for organizations.
- a2128 1y agoI created a free, offline, opensource app on Google Play, no monetization or payments, as an individual. When this change rolled out I was required to verify my identity and set up a payment profile or else my app and account would be deleted. After I went through half of the process, they showed a "here's what your users will see on the play store listing under 'About the developer' section!" This included my full legal name, personal email address, and country, which is enough information to find my home address and other information in public registries. This app serves an online community that can be quite crazy and I was absolutely not going to doxx myself to them. I decided I had enough of Google so I gave the app away to a company
- bcye 1y ago- email address is just the one associated with the Google account, it sucks if you started the application on your personal google account, but you can still change it - you need a payment profile to pay the account fee + verify your identity, the last part is probably very important for anti-spam - I can understand that legal name + country can be considered doxxing, but I think it's highly relevant information for users Of course these requirements could be relaxed for low-risk applications (i.e. no INTERNET permission), but I think it's understandable there is so few of them nowadays that it is not a priority.
- rpgwaiter 1y agoIn what way is knowing the full legal name of a developer relevant to end users? I work in the App Store analytics space and even I have never once thought “I wonder what the full legal name and address of the app developer is. I’d love to drive to their place physically or mail a letter 1800s style to discuss their app” The most I’d ever wonder about is maybe their country of origin.
- rietta 1y agoIt’s for serving legal notice!
- jonas21 1y ago> so probably it's some dumb government regulation. Yeah, they need to show your address and phone number to comply with the EU's Digital Services Act. There's more info here (from Apple's docs, but the same applies to Google): https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-compliance-information/manage-european-union-digital-services-act-trader-requirements/ https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-co...