
KDE Connect removed from Google Play store for violating new policy on SMS - coolgoose
https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1107924633750253568
======
pedroaraujo
It's kind of ridiculous that Google is very active in shutting down legitimate
apps like KDE Connect but paid clones of open source apps, or apps that
promise to upgrade Android the version [1], are still happily up for download.

[1]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/b1ske7/stupid_apps...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/b1ske7/stupid_apps_on_the_play_store_promise_to/)

~~~
Aissen
Do not forget about apps that let you download more RAM:
[https://play.google.com/store/search?q=more%20ram&c=apps](https://play.google.com/store/search?q=more%20ram&c=apps)

See
[https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1036595679316140032](https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1036595679316140032)
and
[https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1037219072633659392](https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/1037219072633659392)

~~~
lucasmullens
That's definitely the impression those apps were going for, but the wording is
careful on most of them. They're not technically saying you'll get 4 more GB
of ram, just that the app can clean up some of the 4 GB of ram. They're awful,
but it's not clear to me that they're violating a rule.

~~~
philipov
And that's precisely why Smart Contracts and other types of automated
moderation are doomed to fail. There will always be loopholes in the letter of
the law to exploit, which requires people able to enforce the spirit of the
law instead.

------
Svoka
I find it extremely scary to make business with Google. Their robot would get
your account banned, all cloud, play and every other thing with it. Every hour
it is banned would be lost money and lost customers.

This is not my problem, really. It is Google's public image as I seen it
soulless support for last 10 years, and stories like this pop up time to time.
Too sad they pretty much locked in Android app market, and with every version
it is harder and harder to sideload apps. I am not using any Google cloud
services if I can find alternative.

I understand that it may be my perception, but I do not understand why company
would build such image of itself.

~~~
jasonvorhe
GCP will no longer just shut down your projects without a human approval.

~~~
aepiepaey
But they will still keep your credit card number forever if you ever give it
to them.

Once it's been added, it can't be removed.

They claim it's for auditing purposes, but those "auditing purposes" shouldn't
require keeping it attached to the account as an active payment method (which
is what they enforce).

~~~
stjohnswarts
Yeah they could totally keep it for no more than 2 or 3 months and 99.999% of
any problems with "auditing" would also be handled.

------
azorin
I just had the same issue last week when my app with SMS permissions for
cross-platform syncing was rejected, but after some back and forth with Google
I found out what they needed to let our app through.

When publishing a new release on the Google Play Console, you need to create a
video showing how the permissions are granted as well as the functionality
that uses the permissions, making it clear that this functionality is a part
of the core functionality of the app. After that, they approved it pretty
quickly.

You have to take into account that the Google reps that approve or reject the
apps don't spend much time checking if the app is compliant, so if they don't
see this evidence in the video, the app won't be approved.

~~~
qwerty456127
Great. I always wanted Google to ban the apps that demand permissions beyond
those they obviously need to do the very job I want them to.

~~~
kuschku
That's why runtime permissions and the ability to revoke permissions exist in
the first place.

------
vbsteven
A couple weeks ago Google removed one of my apps for the same violation. I
rebuilt the same application with the SMS feature removed and the Play Store
Developer Console was very unclear and buggy on how to resolve the issue and
get my app out of the rejected status.

I spent the better part of 2 hours just to get everything up and running again
and it's frustrating to know that you cannot easily contact anyone @ Google to
ask for help.

~~~
StreamBright
The #1 reason I do not recommend Google to work with for anybody. The users
are just accidental for them.

~~~
hajhatten
Youtube is another prime example of this. Just look how they've treated even
their biggest content creators when it comes to copystriking and user comments
(something they have no control over). Users are just a nuisance.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I'm sympathetic with regard to Youtube. They have been effectively forced to
adopt these policies by (1) major movie studios and (2) recent news coverage.

There's too many videos for a manual process, so Youtube has to rely on
algorithms and that's always going to be a broad brush.

------
forgotmypw3
I don't bother with GP anymore, just look on F-Droid for anything I need.

Better/faster app store app.

Better warnings about undesirable app behavior.

Better quality apps in the store.

And no nag screen for billing info every time I download a free app.

This seems to be a general trend in software, and perhaps life in general: an
abusive, lower quality default option for those not "in the know", and better
alternatives for anyone who is savvy or has a savvy friend.

~~~
snazz
The app updating process in F-Droid is fairly buggy (I can’t tell if I’ve
tapped the button or not from the upgrade page and sometimes it just doesn’t
work), but in general it is a big improvement.

I’m guessing the “average” person wouldn’t be too happy about losing the Play
Store since proprietary apps aren’t available in F-Droid (by design).

~~~
snaky
An average person doesn't need to remove Play Store to install F-droid.

But if that average person want to remove Play Store (and Play Services blobs)
completely from his devices, he still can use and update the most of his apps
using Yalp.
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstor...](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.yeriomin.yalpstore/)

~~~
snazz
I had forgotten about Yalp. Wouldn’t you still encounter compatibility issues
with apps that require Play Services functionality?

~~~
snaky
An average person would be amazed by the fact most of apps he is using
actually work perfectly without Play Services, despite the fact almost all of
them declare Play Services in their manifests as absolutely required.

This stay true even for the games, although some functions like in-game
purchases and 'social' things may not work.

~~~
darkpuma
> _" although some functions like in-game purchases and 'social' things may
> not work."_

Some may even consider that a feature.

------
jraph
So KDE Connect (with all features) joins NewPipe, AdAway and other amazing
Android applications that are on F-Droid and not on Google Play.

~~~
jumbopapa
Any other great apps on F-Droid?

I'm using all of the above except AdAway and:

\- Orgzly: Org-mode brought to your phone. I use it for capturing TODOs and
push notifications for reminders.

\- Revolution IRC: IRC Client

\- Syncthing: Syncs files between my computer and phone. Mostly used for .org
files

\- Goodtime: Pomodoro technique time-management

\- Loop Habit Tracker: Track habits (reading, exercise, etc.)

\- Slide for Reddit: Reddit client

~~~
jraph
A selection of F-Droid apps:

\- AFWall+ (firewall, useful to block traffic to limit mobile data usage when
I still need to enable it)

\- Amaze (File Manager)

\- AndIodine (Iodine client, use internet through wifi guarded by captive
portals that still let DNS queries pass)

\- Barcode Scanner (scan QR and bar codes, share things through QR codes)

\- Clementine Remote (control the Clementine music player)

\- Draw (to write scores when playing games)

\- Easy xkcd, Simple Dilbert for comics

\- E numbers, OpenFoodFacts (to know what you eat)

\- Clip Stack, a Clipboard manager

\- DAVx⁵ (formerly DAVDroid), to synchronize contacts and calendars with a
Nextcloud instance (or any CardDav / CalDav provider)

\- ForceDoze (to force the phone to really sleep when the screen is off)

\- Drowser (to kill chosen running apps when the screen goes off)

\- Document Viewer and PDF Viewer Plus to display PDFs. The former seems to
segfault quite frequently but is nice when it works.

\- Fennec or Icecat (Firefox Mobile)

\- ForRunners (to keep track of running sessions, offline)

\- LogCat Reader (to show Android's debugging log)

\- LibreOffice Viewer (useful when people send office documents by mail) - K-9
Mail (Mail client)

\- Maps and OsmAnd (for Offline GPS), OpenVegeMap (helps finding places where
to eat)

\- NextCloud (access files from a NextCloud instance, auto upload pictures)

\- OpenCamera, a nice application for taking pictures. Works better than
Lineage's stock app on my phone.

\- oandbackup: backup data and applications.

\- QKSMS: a really nice SMS app that is able to synchronize with the default
Android SMS app, which is important for me for backups

\- Riot.im (not using it at the moment though)

\- Red Moon, which I use to make the screen even darker (and it works well
with an AMOLED screen). I don't actually use it to filter blue light.

\- SMS Backup +: to backup SMS and call logs to an IMAP account. I also copy
files from /data/user_de/0/com.android.providers.telephony/ for that, which
provide a perfect backup, MMSes included.

\- SatStat (to debug GPS, and show a compass)

\- Sky Map, to see the stars and constellations.

\- Sound Recorder

\- Termux: provides a GNU/Linux like environment, and a great terminal
emulator which can be used with a real GNU/Linux distribution installed in a
Chroot or from SSH.

\- UnicodePad (look for unicode characters / emojis)

\- VLC (a good music and video player)

\- 2048, Open Flood, PipePanic (games), DroidFish (chess)

XServer XSDL is a good free X11 server for Android that is unfortunately not
in F-Droid but now there is an X server in F-Droid (which seems to have less
features).

Etar looks like a good calendar app. I've come across Wi-Fi Reminders, which
can be used to display notes when connecting to a particular Wi-Fi, which
seems nice and useful. There are apps to avoid leaks when using Wi-Fi. And
also notes / tasks apps that I don't use regularly. TrebleShot looks nice to
exchange files between devices.

[edit : added oandbackup]

~~~
phillc73
If we're making an F-Droid list and checking it twice:

\- FreeOTP+ for 2FA

\- Wireguard for use with Mullvad VPN

\- AnkiDroid flashcards

\- AntennaPod for podcasts

\- Telegram for messaging

\- Twidere twitter client

Plus a few already noted above.

~~~
dotancohen
Anki is amazing, highly recommended. I use it to study everything from human
languages to programming languages.

If it were not for Ankidroid, I would be satisfied with a dumb phone.

------
GlitchMr
Google doesn't have support even if you pay them (other than for Google Ads,
Google Ads has an actually existing support), pretty much that, everything is
done by robots which will tell you everything is fine.

~~~
Aldo_MX
Not even Google Ads when you’re not actually an Ads user, they screw something
with your account during a migration and you’re effectively banned from
unrelated services like AdMob because they decided to force an integration
with Google Ads and creating a new account doesn’t work because “same address
policy”.

I personally decided that it is easier to integrate a Google competitor to
Flutter than to actually contact a human at Google, but I’ve nightmares about
Google acquiring whichever advertising provider I integrate.

------
noobermin
Remember this the next time you don't get that job at Google. Somehow the most
selective and elite of tech institutions can't bother to do customer service.

~~~
stevehawk
It's one of the reasons I'm convinced that Google et al don't hire the best
engineers/programmers, but really just the best interviewers.

~~~
gabbygab
Or maybe they hire the best engineers who interview well? Being a great
engineer and being a great interviewer aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
You can be both.

Also, after 20+ years in business, google engineers are still highly respected
and sought after by every company for their tech expertise. If google didn't
hire the best, that luster would have faded a long time ago.

Google has always been great at tech and poor at customer service. Though that
seems to be a industry wide problem, rather than a google specific one.

~~~
mtnGoat
"sought after by every company"

certainly not sought after by my company, and i hate to speak for others, but
i can name at least a handful of others where having any of the FANGs will
usually get your resume circular filed. :x

~~~
noir_lord
If I was hiring currently been former FANG wouldn't shift the needle one way
or the other.

At the scale they operate been one developer amongst tens of thousands on it's
own isn't a good metric.

------
tyfon
And google is supposed to launch a gaming console today that streams from the
cloud. It's bound to generate a ton of support cases, I wonder how they will
handle that.

I also wonder how they deal with the countries that require a publicly listed
phone number and address to be able to contact them.

~~~
muststopmyths
>It's bound to generate a ton of support cases, I wonder how they will handle
that.

They would have to try hard to be worse than Xbox Live Support. Customer
service is dead for most consumer electronics.

~~~
stordoff
I've found Live to have great support. Console arrived with a broken disc
drive - shipping label seen sent within an hour, and a free (download) game
for the trouble; wanted to cancel a transaction and the site was bugging out -
sorted in about five minutes in the online chat; controller broke - free
shipping label and back in about a week; console developed a fault in use -
ditto.

------
nukeop
Horror stories like this one crop up every now and then. The other time they
locked all the G Suite accounts of an entire company just because one of the
employees has made a couple of bad chargebacks for some Android apps on his
private account that was supplied as a recovery email for his company account.
And they didn't even provide a reason, the company had to investigate and find
out on their own.

~~~
lima
That particular story was completely made up. It was implausible to begin
with, given that G Suite is a business product with contracts that doesn't
just get "banned", and Google confirmed that they weren't aware of any such
incident and failed to get in touch with the author.

This comment is a great example on the effectiveness of spreading
unsubstantiated FUD.

Last discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17115643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17115643)

Google response:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banne...](https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/8l231x/google_banned_an_entire_company_gsuite_accounts/)

> _The original poster on Reddit (OP) did not identify him /herself or the
> customer account. We have made several attempts to reach out to the OP
> through PM, but have yet to receive a response. (If the OP or someone from
> his/her company is reading this, please get in touch with me. We have tried
> to identify the customer based on the information in the original post,
> including an extensive review of recent support cases, but have not found
> any cases resembling the description._

~~~
vetinari
There are small companies, running on grandfathered free Google Apps for
domains accounts. It is still somewhat different product than the current G
Suite.

------
djsumdog
My current phone has been falling apart for a while and I've already replaced
the back 3 times and the camera. With the battery going out and the back
starting to crack again under the case, I decided I'm getting sick of Android.

My next device needs to be something I can easily run Plasma on. Maybe I'll
pre-order a Purism phone. I want a real open source phone, similar to running
a Linux distro on my PC in the late 90s.

I'm willing to write applications to fill in the gaps for my needs to get away
from the toxic Google ecosystem. I want a phone with real open source
software, not some crippled Android minus the Play store.

~~~
westpfelia
Sadly I think the Purism phone just was pushed back wasn't it?

~~~
kop316
The release was pushed from Summer 2019 to Fall 2019.

I was in the same boat as the grandparent. I ended up getting a cheap phone
that I could put lineageOS on, I installed F-Droid, and I didn't install any
of Googles Apps. Its working out very well actually.

~~~
noir_lord
If you need another cheap phone I can heartily recommend the Nokia 6.1 at
199.99 it was an absolute bargain.

I know HMD isn't the original Nokia (though it has a lot of the management)
but it's an excellent phone and with AndroidOne you get security updates
immediately which was a big thing I wanted after Moto-G's

~~~
kop316
Nice! I got a Sony xperia XA2, I found it open box for $150

------
Jedd
KDE Connect is one of my top five favourite / essential apps.

Sure, I'm on KDE desktop (have been since the late 1990's) so I'm aware I'm in
the (tiny) minority, but the functionality is hard, perhaps impossible, to
beat.

This kind of craziness isn't helping anyone.

~~~
half-kh-hacker
I don't use KDE as a desktop environment, but KDEConnect works just fine
outside of KDE in my experience.

~~~
dingaling
And kdeconnect-cli is very handy in a terminal for sending files back and
forth to phones

------
Mindwipe
Google have completely messed up this SMS policy.

Someone senior needs to step in and fix this, it's utterly toxic for developer
relations. The process is unreliable and doesn't work, and bluntly this sort
of whitelisting of APIs for people "we think really need it" is a bad idea in
the first place.

Anything that is behind such a whitelist should be a userland permission,
approved (or not) by the end user, not Google.

~~~
rauhl
> Anything that is behind such a whitelist should be a userland permission,
> approved (or not) by the end user, not Google.

You’re assuming that Google’s desire here is to protect the user. I don’t
think that’s the case: I think that their desire is to _control_ the user. Cf.
how Android presents the user with a warning if he installs his own trusted
HTTPS certificate (and how newer version of Android simply ignore his trusted
certificate): Google claim that they are simply concerned about naïve users,
but my contention is that they are motivated by a desire to prevent users from
viewing the traffic of Google apps.

~~~
tetromino_
Try to consider the effect not just on yourself and the tiny number of people
exactly like yourself, but on average non-technical users who were getting
socially engineered into exposing their passwords and nudes to their bosses,
stalkers, criminals, and public morality enforcers.

~~~
stonogo
Yeah, why think about yourself instead of this handy strawman?

------
enriquto
Why do people still use the "play store" when other repositories like f-droid
are arguably better and perfectly available? This is beyond me. The terms of
service of the google play store are callous and unacceptable.

~~~
crottypeter
Believe it or not, Joe public hasn't heard of f-droid.

Google Play is _the_ app store for most android users (at least in the west).

~~~
wy6psk
This is KDE Connect, not Snapchat. Joe Linuxonthedesktop has definitely heard
of F-Droid.

~~~
Arnt
Speaking as a KDE Connect user who's heard of F-Droid, I installed F-Droid,
then deinstalled it. It was too noisy and intrusive. When I told it I didn't
want to replace an app with its version it kept asking again and again, every
day at least.

Since then I've head that the F-Droid operators insist on signing all apps
themselves, instead of the developers' signature. That's as bad as the TLS
inteceptors that insist on accepting an extra CA.

Some people seem to think that F-Droid is obviously preferable to Googleplay.
That is, at the very least, not obvious.

~~~
Iolaum
Fdroid maintainers require shipped apk's to have 0 non-free components. The
only way to ensure that is to build the apps themselves (so that they can
verify code and control dependencies). This means that they can only use their
own keys.

~~~
Arnt
No it doesn't. They could check the developer's signature against an APK built
from source. It's not that difficult.

BTW. In my case the app they urged me to replace the stock keyboard with a
version that had been built without support for Norwegian. Is the language
data in Android non-free?

~~~
kuschku
They can, and they offer that, if the developer supports reproducible builds.

Most apps aren’t possible to be built reproducibly, though, as the Android
developer toolkit was never designed for reproducible builds and relies on
stuff like filesystem ordering of files (which differs between machines).

------
unethical_ban
The inability to read SMS is flat-out user-hostile.

They could have a permissions UI with red/yellow/green indicators for privacy
risk or similar, and let users choose. I _want_ Lightflow and KDE Connect to
have access. Why is that so hard to understand?

Oh wait, they do. They're just intentionally crippling their product.

------
Aissen
Albert, the developer says it's now fixed:

[https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1108648884056834048](https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1108648884056834048)

------
monochromatic
God help you if you ever need support from a human being at google.

------
xhruso00
This simply needs more publicity. Up-vote so Google will find a human to do a
proper support!

~~~
clebio
Or maybe let's talk about the root issue here and not just try to use social
media and HN in the place of formal support paths.

~~~
xhruso00
I have read many articles where people got ban/reject and no human ever talked
to them. No right to defend.

------
wy6psk
It seems to be here so I don't know what the post is about.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.kdecon...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kde.kdeconnect_tp)

~~~
Svoka
[https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1107924636799504384](https://twitter.com/albertvaka/status/1107924636799504384)

> I'm about to upload a version of KDE Connect to the Play Store with the SMS
> functionality removed.

Google removes app from the app store until you upload new version.

Not sure if you know, but for KDE Connect SMS access is part of core
functionality, allowed use of the API, and author wanted to call explain it as
written in [0] but there is nowhere to call.

It's all in a thread.

~~~
tetromino_
But are you sure it is an allowed use of the API?

According to [https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
developer/answ...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
developer/answer/9047303) an allowed use of the API is "connected device
companion apps that _enable sending and receiving of SMS or calls_ ".

Did KDE Connect allow _sending and receiving_ SMS from your PC? The only thing
I see in the app description is getting " _notifications_ for incoming calls
and SMS messages", which might have been insufficient.

~~~
kuschku
> Did KDE Connect allow sending and receiving SMS from your PC?

This was actually one of the more recent features they were working on, afaik,
yes.

