5 ms·

AppLovin nonconsensual installs

179 points by jhap 1y ago

agambrahma 1y ago
Sorry, couldn't help myself https://imgflip.com/i/a940ug https://imgflip.com/i/a940ug
OgsyedIE 1y ago
Are there any apps designed to specifically gate every install, including background OTA installs sent by carriers, because I'm security conscious with my devices but I have family who very much are not. Ideally, I can just nag my non-tech savvy relatives to let me install such a security app for them and then enjoy having peace of mind for their behalf.
- taspeotis 1y ago
  Yes: “App Store” on iOS protects you against exactly this.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    Having non-tech-savvy relatives throw out their phones, buy thousand dollar hardware and swap to an operating system they are unfamiliar with is an absolutely terrible solution to the problem.
    - alfalfasprout 1y ago
      Hyperbole of this comment aside, what else do you suggest then? It's a fundamental tradeoff between allowing multiple ways for apps to be installed or forcing everything through a single installation workflow (a la iOS and its App Store).
      - margalabargala 1y ago
        Nothing in my comment was hyperbolic. The median price of a current gen iphone is $999. The people OP is asking about are not typical HN users; asking them to change phone operating systems is an unreasonably onerous ask. OP had a good suggestion for a solution, something that allows gating surprise app installs.
        renewiltord 1y ago
        Anyone who is trying to save money shouldn't buy the "median" device. Just get an older iphone or the SE if you want it. Doesn't make sense. “I’m in top 10 percent of price conscious users so I want 50th percent device”? Just illogical behavior.
        margalabargala 1y ago
        An older iPhone or an SE is still hundreds of dollars more device than these people need.
        BoredPositron 1y ago
        It's not even a hundred dollars for the 2020 SE model which still has 2 years of updates in it. For the newer 2022 model it's under 200 from refurb sellers. You can get 13s for under 250. You can even get apple care with the new subscription model and sneak a new battery for 12 bucks. Arguing with bogus facts is bad manner.
        margalabargala 1y ago
        You're awfully cavalier with other people's money. Some would call that "bad manners" too since you brought it up. Buying a $100 phone every other year when offered an android phone for free from the carrier is a meaningfully bad financial decision for people less well off than yourself. You are fortunate to be in a position to not have to worry about money like that, but try to have compassion for people less rich than yourself.
    - colechristensen 1y ago
      On the other hand, iOS is popular because of quality issues like this. Android is only as good as it is because of the competition from Apple. Before the iPhone you couldn't even get the "cool" phones in America, Japan had so much better things available and everybody envied what wasn't available here. The reason we have any control from the carriers was the power Apple had and the stubbornness of Jobs. A lot of the battles being lost by Apple are being won by groups who will make the ecosystem worse.
      - margalabargala 1y ago
        I mean sure, the iPhone did a ton to create the modern smartphone as we think of it. If you as a user care about that history and want to support what Apple does, you should buy their devices. That doesn't make it a reasonable device for a sizable segment of the non-tech-savvy population though.
    - lukev 1y ago
      It definitely can and should be a factor when choosing what hardware to set your relatives up with in the first place, though.
      - OgsyedIE 1y ago
        It's much too late for that in both my case and the same case for probably tens of thousands of others.
        loeg 1y ago
        Many people are buying new phones every couple years. That's a new opportunity to switch.
        cudgy 1y ago
        If you leave your front door open, you’re gonna get a lot of strangers and stray animals in your house. If you don’t have the desire to close the door, I guess you’ll just give in and get familiar with your new roommates. I’ve never understood why people use android, which was built by the largest advertising company in the world. A company with a history of violating privacy, scanning personal data for advertisement purposes. Also, what amazes me, is that many technical, well-informed people continue to use standard android os, knowing full well that they’re giving up major privacy protections and using a much less secure platform than alternatives like iOS. I’m sure there’s good reasons for it that people have and can rationalize. The main rationalization that I have seen from technical people is that they just hate Apple. They’ll never use Apple, even if they have to give up significant privacy. Other people like the fact they can customize the device (which I like as well), but unfortunately, makes it easier for bad actors to customize your phone in ways you don’t want.
    - FredPret 1y ago
      Take the hourly billing for those of us who work that way. Multiply by family tech consulting time. It's probably cheaper to buy an iPhone for everyone! At least this used to be true in the halcyon days when iOS was simple.
  - Nifty3929 1y ago
    The same "walled garden" app store that is much maligned on HN?
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      Yup. Geeks don’t like it. But Apple is a three-trillion-dollar corporation, because most folks aren’t geeks.
      - MrDarcy 1y ago
        I’d bet a large sum of money the safari user agent holds the top spot for total number of mobile users for Tuesday US office hours. Maybe dang can validate or reject the hypothesis.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      The only walls that need to be in place to prevent this are against malicious carrier app stores. There's no need to restrict users here, which is what people complain about. Stopping carriers from ruining phones is quite popular on HN from what I've seen.
- nicoburns 1y ago
  You could try looking at "MDM" products. They're mostly targeted at corporations, and tend to be server based (OS calls the server directly) rather than on-device apps. But they can do some of these kinds of things.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > could try looking at "MDM" products TinyMDM at $23/year seems to fit the ticket [1]. (I've never used it and just heard about it today.) [1] https://www.tinymdm.net/pricing-usd/ https://www.tinymdm.net/pricing-usd/
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  Not buying a carrier phone or buying an iPhone (which doesn't permit carriers to inject the same type of crap into the device, they can only influence access to certain settings). AppLovin cannot install anything in the background without deep system access, and manual installation of non-Google apps requires confirming at least three popups. There are antivirus apps on Android that will warn you for this crap, but an antivirus cannot work on an operating system designed to install malware.
- kokada 1y ago
  Modern Android devices now have the "Device Protection" option that does a bunch of things, including disabling side loading. And I think you can enforce this via work profiles too.
rgovostes 1y ago
How does the platform even allow a single tap on an ad to install an app? Edit: Discussed somewhat here https://www.benedelman.org/applovin-permissions/ https://www.benedelman.org/applovin-permissions/. Seems like it's abetted by garbage from the carrier. Something for iOS to look forward to?
- lysace 1y ago
  You neglected to mention Google's Android. It's business model that maximizes for reach over everything else is the root cause.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    The two options are reach over all else, or control of its customers and overcharging them at every turn over all else. One is not obviously better than the other, though I'll grant that Apple has managed to get their users to a place where being subjected to them has become a point of pride, which is impressive.
    - eigen 1y ago
      > The two options are reach over all else, or control of its customers and overcharging them at every turn over all else. do you have an example of "overcharging them at every turn"? looking at the Google One [1] vs Apple iCloud [2] pricing it seems pretty similar. ------ Google Apple 5 GB: free free 50 GB: N/A $0.99 100 GB:$1.99 N/A 2 TB: $9.99 $9.99 6 TB: N/A $29.99 [1] https://one.google.com/about/plans?hl=en&g1_landing_page=0 https://one.google.com/about/plans?hl=en&g1_landing_page=0 [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/108047 https://support.apple.com/en-us/108047
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      If we look iphone versus the direct google phones, both are quite expensive and at this point google's about $800/TB for storage upgrades is actually worse than apple's price.
andy 1y ago
I reported problems about applovin sdk clicking on/opening ads on ios apps like a decade+ ago. have never used them since.
like_any_other 1y ago
> Why would Samsung, T-Mobile, and others grant AppLovin the ability to install apps? Exotica like Fairphone and PinePhone are starting to look pretty good...
doctorpangloss 1y ago
AppLovin has been doing this for a long time. BlueStacks and some other vendors have been doing this for literally a decade. The root problem is that Google Play is poorly curated. One problem it has is that it ranks apps that have many downloads higher than those with fewer downloads. AppLovin is used to boost downloads for the purposes of the Google Play algorithm. Of course, this is known to Google.
- bedelman 1y ago
  Are you sure BlueStacks installs apps without user consent? I know BlueStacks as an emulator to play Android games on PC and Mac. That's a legitimate business, 100% consistent with what users want. Versus what I (author of the piece linked above) reported is that AppLovin is installing apps that users don't want -- installing silently, installing when users tap X, installing after a quick (5 second) countdown.
  - doctorpangloss 1y ago
    > Are you sure BlueStacks installs apps without user consent? You think deeply about that question.
FredPret 1y ago
AppLovin makes a gargantuan profit margin of 45%: https://valustox.com/APP https://valustox.com/APP Even so, I avoid stocks that don't have a sustainable, value-based business model.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > AppLovin makes a gargantuan profit margin of 45% 65% (68^%) net (gross) income margin for Q2 '25 [1]. 44% (54%) net (gross) for Q2 '24. (Nitpick: I don't love financial dashboards that don't define and date their metrics. For example, what does leverage on that page mean?) [1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1751008/000175100825000072/app-20250630.htm#i7e9a3ee221b14949bbf91c49a67dd51c_16 https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1751008/0001...
donsupreme 1y ago
I really hope Unity gain more mobile gaming ads market shares away from AppLovin.
lukec11 1y ago
I looked through the AppHub APK last year after a friend told me they'd found unknown apps installed on their flagship Samsung, and I was very surprised to find some of the same "direct download" references you did. I've known for a long time that T-Mobile shipped junk apps upon initial setup, but seeing them loaded OTA after a single click on an ad (even a few pixels off of the "x" button) is very concerning. Even putting aside the moral issues with practices like this, that's a huge security hole in a very large percentage of Android phones.
- bedelman 1y ago
  lukec11, I would enjoy chatting with you about methods and findings. Send a note? https://www.benedelman.org/mail/ https://www.benedelman.org/mail/
  - w-ll 1y ago
    ADB can show you what package install'd a package. I've been running a setup but I gernally buy a bunch of the same phone, but after they get wifi they install masive amounts of junk.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - bedelman 1y ago
      Yup, can see what package installed a package both via ADB and even in the Settings > Apps GUI. Of course that's a slightly different question from whether the install was nonconsensual.
bradybd 1y ago
Quite damning evidence
byronwrites 1y ago
Somebody made a song about this. Hah! https://open.spotify.com/track/2sNBdJV7LjV3oxSKnE5kQT https://open.spotify.com/track/2sNBdJV7LjV3oxSKnE5kQT
lurtbancaster 1y ago
> ad tap (just clicking an ad, potentially a misclick aiming for a tiny X button, with no Install button even visible on screen) > AppLovin’s X’s are unusually tiny, so mis-taps are especially likely This is why I use Intent Intercept - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.k3b.android.intentintercept/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.k3b.android.intentinterce... It tells me exactly what's about to happen from my tap(accidental or intentional), and gives me the option to undo my tap. Every privacy/security conscious Android user should have Intent Intercept installed on their devices already.
- cudgy 1y ago
  Makes sense. Pretty sad to have to install a tool like that to get security on a platform that is used by billions of users. Even more shocking that apps get installed just from clicking a small close button on a silly ad without even prompting for the install? Installing random tools to hopefully get more security, though is risky also. Hopefully that tool doesn’t get compromised as it is privy to all intent activity.
  - lurtbancaster 1y ago
    > Pretty sad to have to install a tool like that to get security on a platform that is used by billions of users. You click on a banner ad inside an app, and if you have Intent Intercept installed, it won't immediately register as an "impression" and take you to wherever the banner has been programmed to take you to by default. Since Intent Intercept also affects the ad industry(of which Google is a big part), I don't expect Google to build a similar less-nerdy tool into Android by default. > Installing random tools to hopefully get more security, though is risky also. Hopefully that tool doesn’t get compromised as it is privy to all intent activity. Intent Intercept is open source(Apache License 2.0 https://github.com/k3b/intent-intercept https://github.com/k3b/intent-intercept) and its release binaries are hosted on F-Droid, arguably the most trusted Android "store" for Free and Open Source apps. So I'm not too worried.
    - cudgy 1y ago
      I think we should always be worried when installing even open source tools that are injected within operating system functions, especially tools that pull in many external libraries. It adds to the threat surface area. However, in this case, this tool will hopefully mitigate that risk and, as you said, the creator of the OS is actually a threat too (by leaving their OS vulnerable in order to facilitate their ad business).
bedelman 1y ago
Bloomberg reports both that Applovin says they did get user consent ("Users never get downloads with any of our products without explicitly requesting it") and that they're nonetheless shutting down the app install business because it was, supposedly, "not economically viable." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-15/applovin-shuts-array-software-tied-to-unwanted-app-download-allegations?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MDUzODcwMywiZXhwIjoxNzYxMTQzNTAzLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUNDRONEZHUFFRQ0EwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIzMkI3NjREMjRGNDQ0OTEyQjE0Mzc1OTA4ODY4N0FFNiJ9.SCkdE6Q_ODByepWVLAIU5GXuzhnLWvDf4zsuPv5MKuE&leadSource=uverify%20wall https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-15/applovin-...

179 points by jhap 1y ago

Sorry, couldn't help myself https://imgflip.com/i/a940ug https://imgflip.com/i/a940ug

Are there any apps designed to specifically gate every install, including background OTA installs sent by carriers, because I'm security conscious with my devices but I have family who very much are not. Ideally, I can just nag my non-tech savvy relatives to let me install such a security app for them and then enjoy having peace of mind for their behalf.

taspeotis 1y ago
Yes: “App Store” on iOS protects you against exactly this.
- margalabargala 1y ago
  Having non-tech-savvy relatives throw out their phones, buy thousand dollar hardware and swap to an operating system they are unfamiliar with is an absolutely terrible solution to the problem.
  - alfalfasprout 1y ago
    Hyperbole of this comment aside, what else do you suggest then? It's a fundamental tradeoff between allowing multiple ways for apps to be installed or forcing everything through a single installation workflow (a la iOS and its App Store).
    - margalabargala 1y ago
      Nothing in my comment was hyperbolic. The median price of a current gen iphone is $999. The people OP is asking about are not typical HN users; asking them to change phone operating systems is an unreasonably onerous ask. OP had a good suggestion for a solution, something that allows gating surprise app installs.
      - renewiltord 1y ago
        Anyone who is trying to save money shouldn't buy the "median" device. Just get an older iphone or the SE if you want it. Doesn't make sense. “I’m in top 10 percent of price conscious users so I want 50th percent device”? Just illogical behavior.
        margalabargala 1y ago
        An older iPhone or an SE is still hundreds of dollars more device than these people need.
        BoredPositron 1y ago
        It's not even a hundred dollars for the 2020 SE model which still has 2 years of updates in it. For the newer 2022 model it's under 200 from refurb sellers. You can get 13s for under 250. You can even get apple care with the new subscription model and sneak a new battery for 12 bucks. Arguing with bogus facts is bad manner.
        margalabargala 1y ago
        You're awfully cavalier with other people's money. Some would call that "bad manners" too since you brought it up. Buying a $100 phone every other year when offered an android phone for free from the carrier is a meaningfully bad financial decision for people less well off than yourself. You are fortunate to be in a position to not have to worry about money like that, but try to have compassion for people less rich than yourself.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    On the other hand, iOS is popular because of quality issues like this. Android is only as good as it is because of the competition from Apple. Before the iPhone you couldn't even get the "cool" phones in America, Japan had so much better things available and everybody envied what wasn't available here. The reason we have any control from the carriers was the power Apple had and the stubbornness of Jobs. A lot of the battles being lost by Apple are being won by groups who will make the ecosystem worse.
    - margalabargala 1y ago
      I mean sure, the iPhone did a ton to create the modern smartphone as we think of it. If you as a user care about that history and want to support what Apple does, you should buy their devices. That doesn't make it a reasonable device for a sizable segment of the non-tech-savvy population though.
  - lukev 1y ago
    It definitely can and should be a factor when choosing what hardware to set your relatives up with in the first place, though.
    - OgsyedIE 1y ago
      It's much too late for that in both my case and the same case for probably tens of thousands of others.
      - loeg 1y ago
        Many people are buying new phones every couple years. That's a new opportunity to switch.
      - cudgy 1y ago
        If you leave your front door open, you’re gonna get a lot of strangers and stray animals in your house. If you don’t have the desire to close the door, I guess you’ll just give in and get familiar with your new roommates. I’ve never understood why people use android, which was built by the largest advertising company in the world. A company with a history of violating privacy, scanning personal data for advertisement purposes. Also, what amazes me, is that many technical, well-informed people continue to use standard android os, knowing full well that they’re giving up major privacy protections and using a much less secure platform than alternatives like iOS. I’m sure there’s good reasons for it that people have and can rationalize. The main rationalization that I have seen from technical people is that they just hate Apple. They’ll never use Apple, even if they have to give up significant privacy. Other people like the fact they can customize the device (which I like as well), but unfortunately, makes it easier for bad actors to customize your phone in ways you don’t want.
  - FredPret 1y ago
    Take the hourly billing for those of us who work that way. Multiply by family tech consulting time. It's probably cheaper to buy an iPhone for everyone! At least this used to be true in the halcyon days when iOS was simple.
- Nifty3929 1y ago
  The same "walled garden" app store that is much maligned on HN?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Yup. Geeks don’t like it. But Apple is a three-trillion-dollar corporation, because most folks aren’t geeks.
    - MrDarcy 1y ago
      I’d bet a large sum of money the safari user agent holds the top spot for total number of mobile users for Tuesday US office hours. Maybe dang can validate or reject the hypothesis.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    The only walls that need to be in place to prevent this are against malicious carrier app stores. There's no need to restrict users here, which is what people complain about. Stopping carriers from ruining phones is quite popular on HN from what I've seen.
nicoburns 1y ago
You could try looking at "MDM" products. They're mostly targeted at corporations, and tend to be server based (OS calls the server directly) rather than on-device apps. But they can do some of these kinds of things.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > could try looking at "MDM" products TinyMDM at $23/year seems to fit the ticket [1]. (I've never used it and just heard about it today.) [1] https://www.tinymdm.net/pricing-usd/ https://www.tinymdm.net/pricing-usd/
jeroenhd 1y ago
Not buying a carrier phone or buying an iPhone (which doesn't permit carriers to inject the same type of crap into the device, they can only influence access to certain settings). AppLovin cannot install anything in the background without deep system access, and manual installation of non-Google apps requires confirming at least three popups. There are antivirus apps on Android that will warn you for this crap, but an antivirus cannot work on an operating system designed to install malware.
kokada 1y ago
Modern Android devices now have the "Device Protection" option that does a bunch of things, including disabling side loading. And I think you can enforce this via work profiles too.

rgovostes 1y ago

How does the platform even allow a single tap on an ad to install an app? Edit: Discussed somewhat here https://www.benedelman.org/applovin-permissions/ https://www.benedelman.org/applovin-permissions/. Seems like it's abetted by garbage from the carrier. Something for iOS to look forward to?

lysace 1y ago
You neglected to mention Google's Android. It's business model that maximizes for reach over everything else is the root cause.
- margalabargala 1y ago
  The two options are reach over all else, or control of its customers and overcharging them at every turn over all else. One is not obviously better than the other, though I'll grant that Apple has managed to get their users to a place where being subjected to them has become a point of pride, which is impressive.
  - eigen 1y ago
    > The two options are reach over all else, or control of its customers and overcharging them at every turn over all else. do you have an example of "overcharging them at every turn"? looking at the Google One [1] vs Apple iCloud [2] pricing it seems pretty similar. ------ Google Apple 5 GB: free free 50 GB: N/A $0.99 100 GB:$1.99 N/A 2 TB: $9.99 $9.99 6 TB: N/A $29.99 [1] https://one.google.com/about/plans?hl=en&g1_landing_page=0 https://one.google.com/about/plans?hl=en&g1_landing_page=0 [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/108047 https://support.apple.com/en-us/108047
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    If we look iphone versus the direct google phones, both are quite expensive and at this point google's about $800/TB for storage upgrades is actually worse than apple's price.

andy 1y ago

I reported problems about applovin sdk clicking on/opening ads on ios apps like a decade+ ago. have never used them since.

like_any_other 1y ago

> Why would Samsung, T-Mobile, and others grant AppLovin the ability to install apps? Exotica like Fairphone and PinePhone are starting to look pretty good...

doctorpangloss 1y ago

AppLovin has been doing this for a long time. BlueStacks and some other vendors have been doing this for literally a decade. The root problem is that Google Play is poorly curated. One problem it has is that it ranks apps that have many downloads higher than those with fewer downloads. AppLovin is used to boost downloads for the purposes of the Google Play algorithm. Of course, this is known to Google.

bedelman 1y ago
Are you sure BlueStacks installs apps without user consent? I know BlueStacks as an emulator to play Android games on PC and Mac. That's a legitimate business, 100% consistent with what users want. Versus what I (author of the piece linked above) reported is that AppLovin is installing apps that users don't want -- installing silently, installing when users tap X, installing after a quick (5 second) countdown.
- doctorpangloss 1y ago
  > Are you sure BlueStacks installs apps without user consent? You think deeply about that question.

FredPret 1y ago

AppLovin makes a gargantuan profit margin of 45%: https://valustox.com/APP https://valustox.com/APP Even so, I avoid stocks that don't have a sustainable, value-based business model.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> AppLovin makes a gargantuan profit margin of 45% 65% (68^%) net (gross) income margin for Q2 '25 [1]. 44% (54%) net (gross) for Q2 '24. (Nitpick: I don't love financial dashboards that don't define and date their metrics. For example, what does leverage on that page mean?) [1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1751008/000175100825000072/app-20250630.htm#i7e9a3ee221b14949bbf91c49a67dd51c_16 https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1751008/0001...

donsupreme 1y ago

I really hope Unity gain more mobile gaming ads market shares away from AppLovin.

lukec11 1y ago

I looked through the AppHub APK last year after a friend told me they'd found unknown apps installed on their flagship Samsung, and I was very surprised to find some of the same "direct download" references you did. I've known for a long time that T-Mobile shipped junk apps upon initial setup, but seeing them loaded OTA after a single click on an ad (even a few pixels off of the "x" button) is very concerning. Even putting aside the moral issues with practices like this, that's a huge security hole in a very large percentage of Android phones.

bedelman 1y ago
lukec11, I would enjoy chatting with you about methods and findings. Send a note? https://www.benedelman.org/mail/ https://www.benedelman.org/mail/
- w-ll 1y ago
  ADB can show you what package install'd a package. I've been running a setup but I gernally buy a bunch of the same phone, but after they get wifi they install masive amounts of junk.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - bedelman 1y ago
    Yup, can see what package installed a package both via ADB and even in the Settings > Apps GUI. Of course that's a slightly different question from whether the install was nonconsensual.

bradybd 1y ago

Quite damning evidence

byronwrites 1y ago

Somebody made a song about this. Hah! https://open.spotify.com/track/2sNBdJV7LjV3oxSKnE5kQT https://open.spotify.com/track/2sNBdJV7LjV3oxSKnE5kQT

lurtbancaster 1y ago

> ad tap (just clicking an ad, potentially a misclick aiming for a tiny X button, with no Install button even visible on screen) > AppLovin’s X’s are unusually tiny, so mis-taps are especially likely This is why I use Intent Intercept - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.k3b.android.intentintercept/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.k3b.android.intentinterce... It tells me exactly what's about to happen from my tap(accidental or intentional), and gives me the option to undo my tap. Every privacy/security conscious Android user should have Intent Intercept installed on their devices already.

cudgy 1y ago
Makes sense. Pretty sad to have to install a tool like that to get security on a platform that is used by billions of users. Even more shocking that apps get installed just from clicking a small close button on a silly ad without even prompting for the install? Installing random tools to hopefully get more security, though is risky also. Hopefully that tool doesn’t get compromised as it is privy to all intent activity.
- lurtbancaster 1y ago
  > Pretty sad to have to install a tool like that to get security on a platform that is used by billions of users. You click on a banner ad inside an app, and if you have Intent Intercept installed, it won't immediately register as an "impression" and take you to wherever the banner has been programmed to take you to by default. Since Intent Intercept also affects the ad industry(of which Google is a big part), I don't expect Google to build a similar less-nerdy tool into Android by default. > Installing random tools to hopefully get more security, though is risky also. Hopefully that tool doesn’t get compromised as it is privy to all intent activity. Intent Intercept is open source(Apache License 2.0 https://github.com/k3b/intent-intercept https://github.com/k3b/intent-intercept) and its release binaries are hosted on F-Droid, arguably the most trusted Android "store" for Free and Open Source apps. So I'm not too worried.
  - cudgy 1y ago
    I think we should always be worried when installing even open source tools that are injected within operating system functions, especially tools that pull in many external libraries. It adds to the threat surface area. However, in this case, this tool will hopefully mitigate that risk and, as you said, the creator of the OS is actually a threat too (by leaving their OS vulnerable in order to facilitate their ad business).

bedelman 1y ago

Bloomberg reports both that Applovin says they did get user consent ("Users never get downloads with any of our products without explicitly requesting it") and that they're nonetheless shutting down the app install business because it was, supposedly, "not economically viable." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-15/applovin-shuts-array-software-tied-to-unwanted-app-download-allegations?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2MDUzODcwMywiZXhwIjoxNzYxMTQzNTAzLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUNDRONEZHUFFRQ0EwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIzMkI3NjREMjRGNDQ0OTEyQjE0Mzc1OTA4ODY4N0FFNiJ9.SCkdE6Q_ODByepWVLAIU5GXuzhnLWvDf4zsuPv5MKuE&leadSource=uverify%20wall https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-15/applovin-...