Despite the typical moaning from this community any time Android changes anything, this is a good thing. This will combat a new scam tactic that’s been going around where scammers call their target, pretending to be their bank or somebody else the mark would be doing business with, and ask the victim to install a “security update” to their app. They get the victim to install a look-alike app, and then have all their data and money stolen. YOU probably won’t ever fall for such a scam. But your grandma absolutely will.
i took the time to educate her, and so far all Ive heard about is how every time she does get one of those calls she hangs up
Guess is finally about time to move to grapheneos
does graphene os solve this? I thought they were mostly google under the hood
They have Google services
but through a third party wrapper called MicroG, which keeps itsandboxed to a degree that you can keep it from doing system-level actions like thisedit: not microG, as evidenced by the strikethrough I put in very soon after receiving the first of several replies clarifying the situation. I would encourage you to read one of them before adding your own. <3
Gos doesnt use MicroG. MicroG is a foss implementation of googles APIs, with very ways to be tracked, and the ability to turn those components off. Graphene says “you get nothing or you get these closed source black boxes we sandboxed”.
Two things:
- The definition of “Harmful” can mean anything.
- This includes sideloaded apps.
This includes sideloaded apps.
This exactly. I have a FOSS app called VirtualXPosed installed (although I never use it anymore), which creates a “virtual android” in which apps can be installed and be manipulated in ways that would normally require root, despite me not having it on my phone.
Despite having “play protect” disabled, google still constantly sends me notifications about it being harmful.




