Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings | Hacker News Reader

Google now requires and lists phone number in Play Store listings

android-developers.googleblog.com

79 pointsclumsysmurf90 comments

There's more Play news, unfortunately...

Two days ago, I updated Stellarium Mobile. On launch, it now requires that you are logged into the Play Store. No more anonymous Android usage.

I emailed the developer with what I saw in adb logcat, they came back yesterday with this:

> I see your point. The new google verification code requires a google play account it seems. It works with some third party stores, but you need a google account..

> This is probably going to be the case for most apps in the future because Google is pushing for this feature to be enabled by default for all Google Play apps at submission time..

so that's the end of being able to grab apks via Aurora (an alternative, open source client for the play store), at least if the app has any sort of billing function which is not uncommon even for open source apps (think donations). Maybe this is Google's response to the requirement to feeling threatened by needing to give up the app repository monopoly?

I don’t follow. Can’t you bill things without signing into Google? How would they even enforce that?

The app needs to check whether I bought the Plus edition via Google in-app purchases (IAPs) because that's what the developer uses to accept payments. I did not¹ so there is nothing to be billed, but it does the license check of course.

As I understand the developer's response, my being kicked into the Play Store and being told to sign in, with no way of using the app until I've done so, is apparently Google's new requirement for using Google's IAP mechanism at all

¹ I'd love to pay for my use, but rather by something like liberapay or just IBAN transfer, so the developer gets 100% of the money and I don't have to give banking information to Google. With my email to the developer, I also asked for an IBAN in case they can accept payment in that way, as I now had to pirate the apk to use it while signed out of Google, but haven't gotten a response to that yet.

Aurora still works, you just can't use the search, you enable the search tab and it directs to google play in browser , then you hit a button to send the direct link back to app

Not really.

Aurora lets you download and install the apk, but when you then open Stellarium Mobile, then either:

- if you don't have the Play Store enabled, it will throw a stack trace about not being able to reach the licensing server, which manifests in the UI as a pop-up message telling you to reinstall the app (lol) or suck it up, and when you dismiss it, the app closes.

- if you do, then it will open up the Play Store specifically and require you sign in there. Whether it will work then, since Google doesn't know that you have this app installed (since you used Aurora), I don't know. If you don't and you just hit back or something, the app closes.

The developer of Stellarium Mobile says this is going to be the new standard for all apps. A friend that makes an Android game says he heard that he needs to update the in-app purchases SDK before November 2023, so presumably that's when all apps go dark that have any sort of plus/pro/premium version or donation functionality

So you're technically right of course, aurora still works, but if the apps that you can fetch from there don't work, then can I really tell people that they can use aurora instead of the play store?

My LG-C1 does this nonsense. It requires me to have an LG account to download 90% the apps I want (except the big dog streaming services of course) like Plex or GeForce Now. Interestingly enough it allows YouTube but not YouTube kids.

I’ve so far held out and am considering just getting some sort of Nvidia shield-like device (heard they sadly went down the drain over the last few years) to handle all my apps.

So basically LG is asking me to 1) have an account for internet which is separate from 2) my account for my TV which is separate from 3) the myriad of other apps I want to use and require logging in. But of course they leave out the big players that would (rightfully) call this burdensome on the consumer as they make sure access to their content is as streamlined as possible. So Disney/Netflix/Amazon/YouTube/Hulu get around this but everyone else doesn’t.

And execs are wondering why account sharing is so common and piracy is on the rise.

The page isn’t clear on if the info has to be shown or can be shown.

I get doing more to verify developers (ignoring what I think of DUNS).

But acting as an individual developer if I were to think of creating an app for Android and saw that I had to publicly post my phone number that would be an absolute dead stop to development.

If you view the "Full Policy" link, it does seem to state that it must be shown. "where applicable" is vague though...

  Before you submit your app, you must:
  Accurately provide your developer account information, including the following details:
  * Legal name and address
  * D-U-N-S number, if registering as an organization
  * Contact email address and phone number
  * Developer email address and phone number shown on Google Play where applicable
  * Payment methods where applicable
  * Google payment profile linked to your developer account

I have no special knowledge of this, but I think the natural interpretation is that “developer email and phone number” means contact info for a business publishing the app.

I agree, my worry is what if I don’t have a company? Then do they consider me the company and decide to post my information?

Surely not. But it needs clarification.

Minimally, for one who wants to keep a personal number private, this will raise the barrier to entry with an ongoing cost for a separate number.

Still, it’s a win for less technical users -- who ostensibly have never installed an alternative store -- considering they’ll be less likely to recognize scammy apps like the flashlights of old.

But Google can confirm that stuff without display it to the end user. That’s the role the intermediary should play.

Yeah, I agree with that too; it would be preferable if the privacy concern was “only” that it has to be sent to Google and not be displayed publicly.

I think there is another point that it eases support contact for users to developers. But I disagree with that, I think. The developers should be able to decide for themselves how to provide that information, as well as what to provide.

But then that has issues considering developers who might choose “send a letter to this PO box”, so there still has to be some verification that it’s not “too” inconvenient to the end user. From that angle, Google might prefer to dictate these terms.

I see that Google likes to be heavy-handed (and is being so), which I don’t like to see, but this might actually be a positive for someone other than Google (or their business partners), which I do like to see.

That being said, I’m not sure if the positive outweighs the negative. I also suspect Google’s intentions (to say the least) and consider that they really like the extra phone numbers they’ll get people to cough up. It’s certainly interesting to think about.

Mandating a support site or an email or something like that makes total sense to me.

It’s publishing real world addresses or phone numbers that really worries me. Either you have to give up your privacy and possibly be in danger or pay extra to avoid it by buying a phone number or a PO Box somewhere.

This is super trivial, a malicious actor will just use one of the thousands of free receive only sms to confirm

My first thought too. Trivial for bad actors to get around, an annoyance for normal developers.

In the article, there is a screenshot listing the phone number in the "App support" section.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

Individuals: "Google will display your legal name, your country (as per your legal address), and developer email address on Google Play. If you decide to monetize on Google Play then Google will display your full address."

Organizations: "To help improve transparency and user safety on Google Play, Google will display your legal name, legal address, developer email address, and developer phone number on Google Play."

Displaying full home address is especially dangerous. There's a reason why people pay for WHOIS privacy services to keep that private. Crazy people will use that information to show up at your home and harass you or even commit violence against you.

Presumably you could use a PO box but like paying for a second phone number that's another cost to keep small developers out of the Play Store. I imagine most parents won't want their teenager who made an app publishing their phone number and home address on the internet.

Considering one of the fundamental points of a curated application store is end-user security, demanding that software publishers display their contact information is one of the most basic means of establishing and maintaining that security.

If the publisher takes money from their end-users, now more accurately their customers, it is an absolute requirement that their street or mailing address be also displayed for further security and liability purposes. Wouldn't you want to know exactly where your money is going? Wouldn't your bank? Wouldn't your accountant? Wouldn't your tax collectors?

I agree publishing your home street address for all to see isn't ideal, but that is why many people have separate street and mailing addresses and why the wiser folks also run their own business to publish their products under to separate commercial liabilities from their personal liabilities.

> I imagine most parents won't want their teenager who made an app publishing their phone number and home address on the internet.

You need to be 18+ to make a Google Developer account. If the app is monetized, said teenager would need to provide bank account information and deal with taxes, so the parents would need to be pretty involved in the process anyway.

Just create a virtual phone number (say Google Voice) and put that up.

Google Voice is dead, isn't it?

Not dead, but certainly looks pretty abandoned.

So just to list list an app I need to sign up for an additional phone number.

Why? So people can call me? For what? Tech support? To ask if I exist?

I’m not answering that phone number. Im not signing up for it.

People in Hacker News complain left and right about all of Apple‘s policies and the hoops they make you jump through and how you have to pay $100 a year.

I have an app on the App Store. I don’t have to post my phone number and I don’t have to pay for a second one to ignore.

I don't understand. You are paying $100 a year for the App Store. And yet you are unwilling to pay for the existence for a phone number that costs less than $100?

People on Hacker News rightly complain about Apple's store. But you are applying this double standard here. If you want to complain, complain better.

1. As a customer, knowing I can call you goes a long way towards establishing your legitimacy in this day and age of overflowing junk devs and junkware. It's a way of demonstrating and establishing liability, FSVO liability.

2. If you don't want your personal phone number published, which is perfectly justifiable, provide your business phone number. Don't own a business? Go and register one at your local government office. It's probably better for you to publish software under a business instead of your personal name anyway.

2 -- what? No. I'm not a business, I'm a hobbyist. I'm developing a thing I want to share for free with the world. I don't care if it's pseudonymous and I can't build a brand with it. But I want my network not to have to jump through hoops to install it.

A business is a legal entity, a way to separate certain liabilities from your personal name. If you don't want to sell something, that's fine, but that is tangent to owning a business or not.

What you want to do is publish your software without divulging your personal information. The proper way to do that is run your own business (eg: "Colanderman, LLC") and use that to satisfy public information requirements.

Note, if I'm misunderstanding you as to your desires then I do apologize. The overarching subject of discussion here is Google Play Store demanding phone numbers and other such information be publicly displayed, so I'm conversing with regards to how to satisfy that properly without divulging your own personal information.

I publish all sorts of things without divulging personal information. I'm publishing text on this site right now.

I get that certain legal things require publicly associating a legal entity with them, but Google Play Store historically hasn't been, and it's entrenched itself as an effective gatekeeper for software deployed on most mobile phones. Changing their policy adds a frustrating and needless barrier for hobbyist developers.

(Remember that registering an LLC entails a yearly cost in many jurisdictions. It's not free, and I can't afford to pay it for something that's not a money maker.)

> What you want to do is publish your software without divulging your personal information. The proper way to do that is run your own business (eg: "Colanderman, LLC") and use that to satisfy public information requirements.

This is terrible situation for "just" publishing a software. Fortunately, we can use alternative app store on Android, but it's not widely used (at least in western worlds).

Now only if it were that easy to get a phone number to speak to a human at Google

Depends on the product. If it's something you pay for, you can get a phone number. For example, GPay and Play store for billing issues has an accessible phone numbers.

Any place where scaling customer support to the revenue vs number of users tends to lead to a lack of phone numbers.

(Googler, opinions are my own)

Absolutely. As a paying Google Workspace customer (or whatever it's called this week) I have called support on a number of occasions. Zero times have they been able to help in any way (despite technical issues that they admitted were Google's responsibility), but I had a phone number.

Exact same experience contacting AdWords support when we were spending over a million a year.

You can get a hold of someone but they can’t really help you. When issues crossed over into any other area (engineering, other Google products, etc) the answer was basically “I can put an internal ticket in… but you probably want to find a workaround.”

We were only ever contacting them for bugs/issues with Google products or internal processes they had screwed us, not for “help me use the product” type support. Maybe they would have been more successful with that.

My experience: Even if you pay Google, they don't offer adequate phone support and they don't take customer support seriously.

Google Ads sent me an email saying my ad was rejected, then billed me anyway. No idea if the ad ever ran, but they attempted to charge me and suspended my account when the charge didn't go through. It was difficult to get in touch with a support person because they do not offer phone support for accounts that are suspended, and I ended up paying for the ad without ever talking to someone over the phone to figure out why the ad was run after it was rejected. I filed a web form request after payment asking that they reinstate the Google Ads account, but they rejected the request.

I was billed twice for a certain month of Google One, and I had to file a web ticket and send emails with screenshots in order to get one of the charges reversed. There was no option to talk to a person.

Any place where scaling customer support to the revenue vs number of users tends to lead to a lack of phone numbers.

This makes sense, and yet Google will apparently be requiring phone numbers for apps that aren't monetized at all.

it has been my experience that this isn't true. I worked at a fortune 100 that dumped millions into GCP, and they did not offer any type of support for GCP. we had to purchase support through a third party.

But Google doesn't require you to provide a phone number that reaches a human. It just needs a phone number. It could be voicemail only. It's the equivalent of Google providing a generic phone number like 6502530000 on their own business listing. Is there any expectation that this number leads to a human customer support agent that can actually help you? No.

What percentage of existing app developers on the Play Store do not have a DUNS number? Do they need to incorporate an LLC in order to get a DUNS number for their open source project?

Google decided to take the first 15% of app developers' first $1M in revenue instead of 30% in 2021. Google decided to take a 30% cut from all Play Store app and in-app revenue, and you may only use Google Payments in your app (just like Apple).

$150,000 out of $1,000,000 is a lot of money to host downloads, comments, and scan APKs. Shopping malls don't even demand a 15%-30% cut of revenue.

F-droid charges $0 to host APK app downloads and comments but doesn't scan APKs IIUC? https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Security_Model/

How to donate to F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/donate/

And now we need a key to consume our content with Chromecast; which is now the opposite of an open standard.

They're now requiring DUNS numbers for organization accounts, not for individuals. Read the article.

The screen mock-ups for developer information for users show the phone number. It’s not clear from the blog post if the phone number display is a requirement.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

Organizations: "To help improve transparency and user safety on Google Play, Google will display your legal name, legal address, developer email address, and developer phone number on Google Play."

Google has the worst customer service ever and no phone number anywhere.

Wtf is this “do better” bs?

Reading the blog post and linked question/answer, the phone number requirement only applies to organization accounts, not to personal accounts. What is unclear is whether a non-US organization is able to create and use a D-U-N-S number -- especially if they don't have an office in the US.

Apple's App Store has always required D-U-N-S numbers for organizations.

The platform fee of 30% is completely independent from the cost of running the store. The value of the Play store is the reach it provides app developers.

Are there estimates of Play Store cost models and profit margins?

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28382186 :

>> JOSS (Journal of Open Source Software) has managed to get articles indexed by Google Scholar [rescience_gscholar]. They publish their costs [joss_costs]: $275 Crossref membership, DOIs: $1/paper:

>> Assuming a publication rate of 200 papers per year this works out at ~$4.75 per paper

> [joss_costs]: https://joss.theoj.org/about#costs

But that's for ScholarlyArticles without automated peer review.

(And then they need somewhere else to host their datasets, because journals aren't CDNs. And then they need someone else to host repo2docker container instances or repo2jupyterlite in WASM.)

When I loan my money to a bank, they go invest it and give me like a 1% interest rate.

>Shopping malls don't even demand a 15%-30% cut of revenue.

Shopping malls charged rent, and if you look up typical rent-to-revenue ratios you'll find that ~10% is in the range of average, ~20% around the the top end of the range, so not far off the 15% but yes, a bargain compared to 30%. But then again shopping malls don't scan a store's products for basic problems or defects.

On balance, if malls & rent are the comparison point, they roughly balance.

Sure a mall can't, in theory, prevent another group of investors from building a mall #2 next door. In practice though? Local township and city boards can be subverted through regulatory capture such that the people behind the financial interests of mall #1 will make it difficult for mall #2 to get local zoning approvals etc. And really most franchises aren't going to want to setup a competing location within two or three miles of an existing location anyway, but getting in geolocation stretches the metaphor so we can put that aside, as rent is the relevant aspect of the comparison.

> F-droid charges $0 to host APK app downloads and comments but doesn't scan APKs IIUC?

Correct. I've donated before to cover my usage for a while as well as contributed some translations, but it's all volunteer stuff and it's not like we are eager to gatekeep each other's work (assuming that's what you meant by app scanning before publishing).

The quality of things on F-Droid varies as much as it does on google's gated repository, but I have yet to come across a single instance of adware, let alone malware. The store also hosts old versions, so if you don't like the latest changes in an app, you can just hit downgrade. And old apps are not removed if not broken; there's no requirement to keep up with sdk targeting blah. Finished or abandoned products do not have to be kept up-to-date constantly. They look old, but work just fine; google just forbids that.

What phone number will Google be listing for their own apps, I wonder.

A number to a text-to-speech system with Bard on the other end of course

Bard might be a step up from their historic methods that appear little better than an auto responder hooked up to a traditional classifier that occasionally throws a low confidence match over to a human. One who will spend at most 60 seconds reviewing before they choose the canned response.

Bard, given a little leeway, might at least sound human.

Several years ago I discovered that the Chrome Web Store was giving out my home address to customers on the email receipt. There was no physical address set in my Chrome Web Store developer profile, but there was an address set in Google Pay. (This was before the Chrome Web Store eliminated its payment system.)

As soon as I found out, I changed my business address to Google's own address in Mountain View. Google didn't seem to have a problem with this, or didn't notice it anyway.

The "good news" is that my Chrome Web Store sales were quite low. But I never would have known if a customer hadn't emailed me a copy of their receipt (perhaps to get a refund, I don't recall).

When I signed up for Substack, I saw that there was a setting for "mailing address," which is pre-populated with Substack's mailing address.

Why? Because apparently there's a law that at the bottom of commercial email, you need to have a mailing address and unsubscribe link.

(So I guess if they got any mail for you, they'd let you know somehow?)

Similarly for getting a domain name. Technically, you are required to provide your mailing address, email address, and phone number. However, most registrars will let you keep them private and use theirs instead.

Perhaps something similar will happen for Android developers? There could be a relatively lightweight and user-friendly company that handles Play Store listings for indy developers.

Do such companies exist already? It would be interesting to hear from developers who use them.

Wonder what will happen when millions of people phone Google the next time Gmail or YouTube goes down?

This assumes Google have to comply with their own policy of course!

Alternate headline: Google decides to dox app developers.

Where in the article (or the documentation[1]) does it say it will dox individual app developers?

[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

From the link you posted:

Google will display your legal name, your country (as per your legal address), and developer email address on Google Play. If you decide to monetize on Google Play then Google will display your full address.

Now not only will you be forced to endure unsolicited emails about boosting your app's ranking, but also unsolicited phone calls. I recently got a new phone number and it's already doomed to eternally receive phone calls about "boosting your business's ranking" because it was once listed on Google Maps for a business

It says the phone number needs to be verified. It doesn't say a phone number is required.

And you've got to give all your info to some consultancy! " the information that Dun & Bradstreet has about your business is up to date before creating a developer account"

Dun Dun Dun! Playtality!

(In the voice of Mortal Kombat)

Apple's App Store has always required D-U-N-S numbers for organizations.

What services offer long term phone numbers without be having to create new "lines" on my cellular plan?

I currently use an app called "Hushed" but it is extremely expensive, especially compared to how much raw providers like Twilio charge.

There seem to be plenty of "disposable" phone number apps but I just want cheap extra numbers, without having to write code.

Google Voice...

Is it not the case that Google Voice only lets you have one additional number? I need a few.

I think you can have one per account. I'm not sure what their policies on that are, I know I've had many accounts over the years.

You need to verify a real phone number with each additional account and those can't be virtual numbers.

Yeah, I vaguely remember they said that was a thing. I still have probably about ten google accounts and none of them are tied to a real phone number.

It's been years since I set them all up, so I don't remember exactly how I got around that, but it seems like it wasn't terribly difficult. Maybe I used Skype?

They only do the real number check when you are first creating the account right before number selection. They never ask you again to confirm or do any kind of verification with the real number.

I've had to change my phone number a few times over the decade and my personal gvoice is verified with whatever number I had 10 years ago. I just don't set it as a callback or text receiver.

Any VoIP provider, I suppose. I have a few phone numbers at voip.ms, have a VoIP phone on my desk, and selectively forward the numbers to my cell phone. Outbound calls from a cellphone using such a number is a bit more awkward, requiring either a SIP app or calling into the system before punching in the number to dial. (Maybe there are apps to simplify this by now?) SMS is even more awkward, though there are some APIs.

I guess that would be OK except I primarily need SMS.

OpenPhone https://www.openphone.com/

What is preventing you from keeping a Twilio phone number long-term?

I have no way to "use" the number - I need an app that lets me make phone calls and texts.

Number Barn? You can park a number with them for $2/month and have SMS and a recorded voice greeting (but no call forwarding), or for $6/month you can have calls forwarded to you.

You might be able to get something with a prepaid cell phone plan - at one point one of the carriers had something where purchased minutes didn't expire for a year after you'd passed a certain threshold, but no clue what it's like now - I haven't had a prepaid phone since the early days of analog to digital conversions.

Some of the dirt cheap voip carriers like magicjack might also have options but no idea what they charge.

Finally if you're on T-Mobile and don't have any free lines you might be able to add a line free, if not right now then when they do promotions somewhat regularly. The days of tons of free lines are gone, but if you have 2+ paid lines and no free ones they'll likely have a promo for you soon (it might actually reduce your bill because a free line still counts as a line for autopay discounts).

That's all really useful, thank you.

Interesting if you'd be interested in tracking both the play store listing number effectiveness at generating leads CallTrackingMetrics company can help. We focus on connecting humans to other humans.

There could be a big issue, as some websites are already scraping Play Store for developer emails, now they will have phone numbers too. And good luck removing them from some random apk download website.

looks like a direct response to EU agreement https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_... "Furthermore, Google will facilitate also information on the company (e.g. legal name and address) and direct and effective contact points (e.g. a live telephone agent);"

It takes a lot of nerve for this famously support-phobic company to require apps to publish phone numbers and addresses for support.

What's the chance Linux phones will be a reliable option in the next 1-2yrs before this sort of BS does too much damage?

I think it's about time that one of the few popular Android forks breaks from upstream.

Will Google have a phone number?

So, what would be easiest way to move existing userbase to a PWA web app?

No more Google. This is why we can't have nice things.

Those numbers can be easily obtained by people outside USA?

It’s doable from my region, but it has to be done via a partner company that upsells additional services during the onboarding process. If I recall correctly there is a fee for creating the number and an extra free for updating the records.

As someone who is not from the U.S, it was surprising to learn that so many businesses rely on a number issued by a private company instead of a government issued Company ID or Tax numbers like the ones in other countries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com