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Comment by akount | Hacker News Reader

But not allowing that would be blocking all third party installs - one of the good features on Android.

It's a great feature for people who know what they're doing, but you probably don't want all Android users to allow third party installs- it just opens people up to too much risk.

There's no risk. You still have to find APKs to install, if you download from official sources there's no higher risk than downloading from app stores.

Amazon's been recommending + allowing it for years, along with every operating system for decades.

At least in my country (Mexico), the advertisements in several ad networks like AdSense often contain malicious code which redirects you to a website telling:

"your version of WhatsApp is outdated, please update to the current version", and after a countdown (or the click of a link), it downloads a malicious apk to your phone.

I'm completely disappointed, since too many websites use AdSense, and sometimes I can't even check a website, because the redirection is too aggressive.

I understand that the people behind these shady advertisements use aggressive cloaking (ex. only injecting the malicious redirection when you are under a mobile network) to avoid being discovered.

if you download from official sources there's no higher risk than downloading from app stores.

There are tons of malware that ask for shady permissions on Google's app store.. ala battery optimizer -- why Google expose people to such crap?

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