[stymaar]

> This started with phishing

It didn't.

Phishing is just a pretext. Google didn't care about Phishing for the first 20 years of Android. Why do they now? Because it serves as argument to close their platform a little more (which is a trend that has been going on for years).

[Arnt]

I think they care now because of pressure from the governments of the countries involved.

And perhaps because ten and twenty years ago, the sums stolen were small. Now they're in the billions.

[LtWorf]

How do you explain that all the scammers I've entertained used apps that are already on the store?

[Arnt]

I think there's a misunderstanding here.

The attack in question doesn't use apps on the store, or even any attempt to get them on the store. There are also other attacks, but the one that prompted this change uses social engineering to get people to tap the build number seven times, sideload something and get a keylogger that then picked up their banking details and used them. Several governments raised the issue, Google acted. (The actions are to slow down the tap-seven-times process, so it becomes harder for the scammers to keep their victims fooled until the keylogger is installed, and also to tweak the timings, so the scammers can't outrun the app-banning process.)

If you haven't had your bank account drained, the scammers you met were different ones. (And I'm sorry that you've been scammed.)

[LtWorf]

But it is suspicious they want to defend vs attacks that don't happen while doing absolutely nothing to stop the attacks that do happen. Seems like security isn't a goal here?

(I didn't get scammed, I sometimes am curious on what the scam is so i lead them on a bit)

[Arnt]

Are you in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore or Thailand? Those were the four worst-affected countries IIRC. Although I seen to remember Ecuador or Bolivia as well?

(They do something about other scams too. There was another thing they published recently, I didn't pay attention since no side effect of that concerned me, something to do with caller ID.)

[u8080]

Russia is also under heavy attack of phone scammers. Govt using that to shut down and ban messengers, lol, how convinient.

[frollogaston]

I do think it's about Google trying to squeeze profits out of Android, but is there more direct evidence of this? Cause I always have to wonder if it's something else like KYC.

[Arnt]

Of course Google generally tries to squeeze profits out of… whatever it does, but eh, by closing something? Google is the company that makes a million in profit from the openness of the web in the time it takes me to write this paragraph, why would that company think that closing something improves its competitive stance?

[frollogaston]

By imposing Google Play, rather than letting people use Android without any of Google's ecosystem.

About Google squeezing profits out of everything, yes but that's a kinda new thing, mostly starting 2023. They did their first mass layoffs ever, then started cutting costs and milking products more. I'm not saying they were better before or something, it's just that it was growth time before. That was also the same time they started talking about locking down Android, and even WEI.