Google will allow users to sideload Android apps without verification

Re:Google will allow users to sideload Android apps without ... by bogwog on Thursday November 13, 2025 @02:26PM (#45919377)

I trust them, at least a lot more than I do Google, which is a known bad actor, and collaborator with "TLAs". F-Droid has been around for a very long time, if you didn't know. They've built and earned the trust people have in them today.

> Didn’t F-Droid have 20 or so apps that contained known vulnerabilities back in 2022?

Idk what specific incident you're referring to, but since they build apks themselves in an automated way, if a security patch to an app breaks the build, that needs to be fixed before the update can go out (by F-Droid volunteers, usually). In that case, F-Droid will warn about the app having known unpatched vulnerabilities.

Again, this is above and beyond what Google does in their store. Google Play probably has more malware apps than F-Droid has lines of code in its entire catalog.

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Re:Google will allow users to sideload Android apps without ... by nandomrumber on Thursday November 13, 2025 @03:41PM (#45920240)

This incident

https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/11496

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Re:Google will allow users to sideload Android apps without ... by rpdillon on Friday November 14, 2025 @05:33PM (#45932966)

Right, that's literally the team marking 12 apps as having known vulnerabilities (seems like it was because of a WebRTC vulnerability that was discovered). It's the F-Droid system working as intended to inform users about what they're installing.

You're calling it an incident like it was an attack or something, but it just seems like everyday software development. Google Play and the App Store don't let me know when apps have known vulnerabilities. I think F-Droid is coming out way ahead here.

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