While I understand that Google probably hasn’t provided the answers yet, I have two questions about this. First, will I need to setup a pin for my devices? I don’t normally use any form of a lock screen on my devices and I’d prefer to continue not having them but I know from personal experience that some android devices don’t allow you to remove the lock screens after you set them up.
Second, during the 24 hour waiting period, is the device still usable? I know this might sound like a stupid question but Google’s vague wording has me wondering.
It’s so weird that they don’t take comments on the android developer blog post… Almost like they think it’ll be hugely unpopular.
So it’s on the same scale as buying a gun in the states.
I didn’t realise it was so dangerous.
Political power grows from the barrel of f-droid
google doing their best to make me move to a different platform for my next phone.
anybody know of other options?
I don’t think anything other than degoogled Android is mature enough to recommend. And it looks like degoogled androids might extinct soon.
Linux phones are about to get interesting.
I’ve heard that 15 years ago
Same with what we were hearing about the Linux desktop!
…yet here we are in 2026 and literally all my desktops have since become Linux, lol.
Stop fucking calling it sideloading. It is called installing an app
Google is the epitome of living long enough to become the villain.
They changed their “don’t be evil” motto years ago. I guess they must have kept two thirds of it.
How about a 24 hour waiting period for me to harden my OS before Google slurps up all my data.
In these scenarios, scammers exploit fear – using threats of financial ruin, legal trouble, or harm to a loved one – to create a sense of extreme urgency. They stay on the phone with victims, coaching them to bypass security warnings and disable security settings before the victim has a chance to think or seek help.
Does this actually happen? Or they just trying to manufacture consent to all this bullshit?
Do calls like that happen? Unfortunately, yes.
Is it a reason to lock down and enshittify every computing platform, every OS, every Internet-connected device until we own nothing, control nothing and can’t install what we please?
It’s an age old tactic of manipulation to start with something true, exaggerate the threat, and apply it everywhere possible.
age old
Yeah for sure. I have to deal with a lot of tech-support and similar scam victims, and I always wind up explaining that this con is as old as civilization at least, it’s just the location and props that are new.
Lure you in with a benefit or problem solved, ensure that you get lost or disoriented, manufacture fear/uncertainty/doubt, offer a way out, trap is set.
Once upon a time I had someone try to run this same scam on me in meatspace, a big ancient city. Offer a solution to a logistics problem, get me lost in the maze, create new problem of changed conditions, intimidate with new people arriving, and pressure with intense sales tactics on a bullshit product. I wasn’t actually lost so just walked away, curiosity satisfied, but some people would have lost a lot of money.
That does happen. You can see stuff like that on scam baiting videos all the time.
Never seen it and I’ve worked in banking which I would have thought it would be most prevalent. Seen lots of traditional scams, but never stuff that involves side loading apps. I think the attack surface is just not big enough to make it worthwhile.
they do happen yes
Well I’m sure we’ve all heard stories about it happening, and my FIL had someone walking him through a “Microsoft has detected a virus on your PC” scenario one time until he fucked up and lost the connection (fortunately)
This is not a solution at all. They want to make sick of users who have to wait a whole day ust to install a fucking app. Fuck them.
To those who think it is a fair compromise: It is not.
Android already had one layer of this shit before. When installid freshly dowloaded apk, android would prompt you to confirm that the source of the apk is trusted. This was not like this before. Before you’d just install apk.
And I agree to a certain amount. But thing is, it was added for no specific reason. People who install apks form outside source, will keep doing it and they 99% of the time know what they are doing or being told to do so by someone who knows what they are doing.
Adding another layer to this wont solve the problem, except make users annoyed for 24h wait time. And this is only adding 1 layer now. Who the fuck knows what is going to be 1 year later. 5 years later?
No one thinks this is fair. Little old grannys don’t side load apps, so they don’t need protection.
So now what’s is my motivation to move back to android from iPhone if they are gonna do the same bullshit as apple, hopefully some manufacturers switch to more open android versions like lineage or something
iOS is not any better than Android… We gotta wait for other operating systems to emerge.
Sailfish is an awesome OS. Unfortunately no phones currently support US radio bands. I miss using Sailfish. Ubuntu Touch is a good runner up. Options exist. People are clannish though and don’t explore the options. Blackberry 10 OS also was awesome and yet everyone bailed on them. Now we have garbage for choices. I currently run e/OS/ on a Fairphone.
fuck google. We immediately need linux like alternative to android
I’m interested in Jolla phones who develop this os: https://sailfishos.org/
Is GrapheneOS a good enough alternative?
I am very interested in switching to that when their phone comes out… But I wish pure Linux were viable.
It just works. Some banking apps won’t.
One of my banking apps (Citi) didn’t even work in stock Android on a Pixel. It thinks I’m rooted lol.
Everything works well enough in the browser though. Nowadays I just do all that stuff on a desktop PC. Not everything needs to be an app or even done on a phone.
The desktop versions of bank websites have everything I need, whereas mobile versions can skip out on certain features. Plus, these apps tend to hoard perms for “security” reasons, or so they say.
If you have a strong password and legit MFA (like TOTP or a physical key), use a trusted device/browser that’s good enough. There shouldn’t be a need to grab my location or nearby devices.
Bonus points if the bank lets you review login sessions and deauth devices, flags things like impossible travel, etc.
Credit unions tend to do better. DCU is one example. They excel at security, don’t do any silliness with perms in their app, let you review logins and devices, and have a strong MFA implementation. The big private national players just want to sell you to data brokers to pad their margins while you pay ridiculous interest rates on their crappy products and get nothing in return.
I use the browser with a hardware TAN generator, though my bank’s app works fine on GOS.
Graphene has some quirks, but overall experience is solid. Not perfect, but it does the job.
We basically need an android compatibility layer before that can happen.
Iirc, ValvE was working on one for the Steam Frame so all the Android VR games will run natively on SteamOS.
Edit: its called Lepton. Here’s an article i found about it.
Iirc lepton basically just runs Waydroid/lineage under the hood so its still android
I’m not sure that would be necessary, actually. Android is derived from Linux, surely they can do a translation layer for the majority of API calls? I mean there’s no need for emulating anything, nor would it necessarily require layering an entire android install on top of Linux…? But my programming knowledge is limited, and somewhat rusty, so I’m not really sure.
I’m not too familiar with the project, but I thought I heard talk about it being a compat. layer instead of a VM. Idk though, I might be entirely wrong lol.
This would make sense if google play store wasnt full of malware. Scammers dont need you to sideload malicious apps they just get you to download it from the play store.
Worked in a phone store for a bit. And absolutely this.
Googles half the malware themselves.
Cant install (random app name here, since we cant use X anymore as a generic thanks to musk and his 13 year old obsession with naming everything X) app, without having 1500 different google bullshit data trackers installed.
it’s very clear we have to escape Android and Google entirely, there is no other option.
Please donate to PostmarketOS if you have the means, it gives us a true alternative that is completely community owned, it just needs our support to become polished and to add support for more phones.
We have to support software that’s still made for us. While we still can.
Yes, I am more seriously than ever looking into using Postmarket OS.
Remember when you used to own shit? Wow. This is beyond fucked. Right now, it’s “one day”. But this is only because they got a shit load of backlash for disallowing ALL installing software without their permission. They WILL enact it. They’ll just wait until people are used to this. Then they will disallow it all.
I think it was just a technique for them to pretend they listened to the community: first, announce something extreme; then, back down a bit.
People will think they won while they’ve just lost.
