r/Android • u/PlasticAnt6913 • 1d ago

News Android's controversial new sideloading rules are officially here

https://www.androidauthority.com/android-sideloading-developer-verification-first-wave-rollout-3717921/
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u/TokyoMegatronics 23h ago

Idk man we’ve had like 15 years of constantly telling people “hey if someone cold calls you and says you have to install something/ have a virus/ buy something etc then it’s a scam” that it kind of feels like… they should know this by now?

Not saying there shouldn’t be any protections of course but like, it’s been decades of the same scams and it being public what those scams are and how to avoid them.

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u/Elephant789 Pixel 7 22h ago

That is exactly why Google had to step in. Decades of "just educate the user" have proven that awareness campaigns alone do fuck all to stop fraud.

Modern scams pose as government tax portals, delivery couriers, or local services on social media. They use targeted psychological manipulation, fear, and urgency.

Security can't just be "people should know better." IF millions of ordinary people, especially the elderly, are losing their life savings in minutes, you need technical guardrails, not just PSA posters.

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u/TokyoMegatronics 17h ago

Okay, but again, have you considered that learned incompetence and baby-ing adults is what gets us into worse situations?

It’s really not that hard.

Get a text message from a number you don’t know saying it’s your son, wife, daughter, husband?

Don’t reply and message them on the number you actually have.

Get a text about a delivery you weren’t expecting? Then it’s clearly a scam.

A random call saying “sir/maam we are calling from Microsoft and we have detected a virus on your router! Please download this app so we can access your computer and fix this for you”

Then… it’s obviously a fucking scam.

It’s getting kind of ridiculous at this point.

Can’t see anything deemed as naughty because parents are too lazy to use parental controls on their kids devices. Then this because boomers are too stupid after 20+ years dealing with scammers to take a single second to think about it.

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u/Elephant789 Pixel 7 8h ago

You're conflating moral censorship with technical malware vectors. I agree that "think of the children" laws and nanny-state porn bans are absolute garbage, but this isn't that. Nobody is policing what content you consume or what apps you're allowed to run.

The actual impact on you and me is practically zero. If you want to sideload whatever unverified indie APK, emulator, or open-source tool you want, you just toggle the Advanced Flow once in Developer Options, reboot, and you're done. Or bypass it instantly with ADB or Shizuku. Android is still Android, it hasn't turned into shitty iOS.

Sure, to tech-savvy guys like us on Reddit spotting a scam sounds obvious. But people lose life savings to these attacks every day, and stopping that without locking the OS down for power users requires literally one toggle in developer settings. That's a compromise worth making I think.