Have your cake and eat it too [LWN.net]

Have your cake and eat it too

Posted Jul 11, 2026 14:07 UTC (Sat) by Zentaya (guest, #185040)
In reply to: Have your cake and eat it too by marcH
Parent article: An update on the scraper situation

Unfortunately android developer verification is not going to help with netnut infested apps.

Malware infected apps are rampant in the play store even now. ADV will not help with that.

What it will do is prevent apps installed from f-droid and other sources, that are much less likely to contain malware anyway.

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Have your cake and eat it too

Posted Jul 13, 2026 13:45 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Unfortunately android developer verification is not going to help with netnut infested apps.
> Malware infected apps are rampant in the play store even now. ADV will not help with that.

Can you predict the stock market too?

> What it will do is prevent apps installed from f-droid and other sources, ...

Yes, blocking bad actors is often used as an excuse for vendor lock-in. It's easier to do both at the same time and just lock everything down. As I just wrote, being selective takes a lot more effort - including carefully crafted user interfaces: one of the most important and most underrated parts of security. So, as long as there is little regulation then why bother? Just lock down everything.

> ... that are much less likely to contain malware anyway.

Right, why would malware authors waste time with third-party stores that 1) are barely used, 2) tend to be used by more technical users.