Re:Google Play is reinstating the app permissions section
by elliotmurray on Thursday July 21, 2022 @01:52PM
(#32182526)
There are at least some checks in place. I was filling it out for an app that I work on, and forgot about a feature where we shared a GPS location with an API to get a street address. I checked the box to say that the users GPS position never leaves the phone and I pretty much instantly got an email saying that the app was rejected and to fill out the form again.
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Re:Google Play is reinstating the app permissions section
by yjftsjthsd-h on Thursday July 21, 2022 @02:16PM
(#32182785)
That's good to hear, but how do they tell? I mean, following a GPS API call through to something that talks over the network seems like the kind of thing that would be a decent amount of work even with the source code; am I underestimating the state of modern analysis on binaries?
Re:Google Play is reinstating the app permissions section
by awinter-py on Thursday July 21, 2022 @09:22PM
(#32187365)
ah I bet this is google detecting an SDK, not doing deeper code analysis to detect exfiltration of GPS data
they did this with the huq sdk https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vp35/google-tells-apps-dis...
Re:Google Play is reinstating the app permissions section
by awinter-py on Thursday July 21, 2022 @03:24PM
(#32183706)
agree, but also this is where tech needs to get if we want to have private experiences + actual control over downloaded binaries
(could also do dataflow analysis on code in a trusted third party CI system)