Google Play To Ban Android VPN Apps From Interfering With Ads (theregister.com) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Google in November will prohibit Android VPN apps in its Play store from interfering with or blocking advertising, a change that may pose problems for some privacy applications. The updated Google Play policy, announced last month, will take effect on November 1. It states that only apps using the Android VPNService base class, and that function primarily as VPNs, can open a secure device-level tunnel to a remote service. Such VPNs, however, cannot "manipulate ads that can impact apps monetization."
The rules appear to be intended to deter data-grabbing VPN services, such as Facebook's discontinued Onavo, and to prevent ad fraud. The T&Cs spell out that developers must declare the use of VPNservice in their apps' Google Play listing, must encrypt data from the device to the VPN endpoint, and must comply with Developer Program Policies, particularly those related to ad fraud, permissions, and malware.
Blokada, a Sweden-based maker of an ad-blocking VPN app, worries this rule will hinder at least the previous iteration of its software, v5, and other privacy-oriented software. "Google claims to be cracking down on apps that are using the VPN service to track user data or rerouting user traffic to earn money through ads," Reda Labdaoui, marketing and sales manager at Blokada, wrote last week in a a forum post. "However, these policy changes also apply to apps that use the service to filter traffic locally on the device." Labdaoui suggests Blokada v6, which launched in June, should not be affected because it does filtering in the cloud without violating Google's device policies. But other apps may not be so fortunate.
The rules appear to be intended to deter data-grabbing VPN services, such as Facebook's discontinued Onavo, and to prevent ad fraud. The T&Cs spell out that developers must declare the use of VPNservice in their apps' Google Play listing, must encrypt data from the device to the VPN endpoint, and must comply with Developer Program Policies, particularly those related to ad fraud, permissions, and malware.
Blokada, a Sweden-based maker of an ad-blocking VPN app, worries this rule will hinder at least the previous iteration of its software, v5, and other privacy-oriented software. "Google claims to be cracking down on apps that are using the VPN service to track user data or rerouting user traffic to earn money through ads," Reda Labdaoui, marketing and sales manager at Blokada, wrote last week in a a forum post. "However, these policy changes also apply to apps that use the service to filter traffic locally on the device." Labdaoui suggests Blokada v6, which launched in June, should not be affected because it does filtering in the cloud without violating Google's device policies. But other apps may not be so fortunate.
Your privacy... (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't forget the "very". "Your Privacy is Very Important to Us"
The more flowers they throw at the statement, the more bovine excrement the statement contains.
Part of why I deny Google / Alphabet every penny I possibly can, and use their service as little as possibly can.
May as well change their name to Ads R Us!
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...is important to us.
Of course our privacy is important to Google - otherwise they wouldn't be so insistent on stealing it!
Old news (Score:3)
Google already doesn't allow VPNs to block ads. This is why torguard and nordvpn offer sideloadable versions of their apps in addition to their play store versions. Just use the sideload version and...no ads.
Re: Old news (Score:1)
Thatâ(TM)s interesting given that the ad blocking happens on their servers through either proxy or DNS.
Also, my company blocks certain websites including many apps, so apps that provide access to my company VPN are now forbidden?
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Screw that, Firefox has become a viable option on Android and they have full add-on support. That includes uBlock Origin...
Re:Old news (Score:5, Informative)
Screw that, Firefox has become a viable option on Android and they have full add-on support. That includes uBlock Origin...
Firefox in Android only has partial add-on support. Those outside the short "recommended" list are unavailable for quite some time already.
Re: Old news (Score:2)
I did not know that. Thanks for clearing that up!
Re: Old news (Score:2)
If you use Firefox nightly, you can get access to a much broader selection. That's what I use anyways, I don't rely on VPN apps.
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Re: Old news (Score:2)
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I got curious about that and started monitoring traffic on a couple Android devices. It looked to me like many Android applications were delivering content over SSL-encrypted transfers using name resolution that is hard coded in the apps or which does something like a split tunnel to ignore an on-device VPN that should for name resolution to a specific server.
I didn't spend THAT much time following it, but it explained we I couldn't prevent Imgur, Tumblr and Snapchat from displaying ads
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Not only that, they still haven't returned features present in 68.
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Google already doesn't allow VPNs to block ads. This is why torguard and nordvpn offer sideloadable versions of their apps in addition to their play store versions. Just use the sideload version and...no ads.
Yep, As Google don't force you into a walled garden where you MUST use their web browser and restrict you from doing what you want, this is a complete non-issue.
I don't really see ads on my Android phone. There's only one place where they are displayed (google search) which I can get around by using Firefox Mobile. They certainly aren't spamming me.
I would like to personally thank Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: I would like to personally thank Google (Score:2)
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Elipse
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While I agree that Google is s**tty company when it comes to respecting privacy, the number of people who will stop using the Google play store over this issue is probably equivalent to the number of people who preferred the Nomad vice the iPod...
I have never bothered with Google Playstore. EVER. If I can't sideload the app that I want then I probably don't want that app anyway.
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It's been that way for a long time. There are loads of useful apps on F-Droid that aren't allowed on Play, or only allowed on with features disabled.
Play is a walled garden, it's a safe place for people who don't know anything about security. Google doesn't stop power users installing F-Droid or side-loading though, so I'm fine with it. Play is a service for people who want it, it's not like on Apple products where it's the only option.
Right to spy (Score:3)
Google defends its right to spy. All in now on the be evil.
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Wrong year... Don't Be Evil fell with the DoubleClick deal in 2008.
Still, this one seems fair... don't use VPN to put your ad over the Google sponsor...
If that a war they want, they'll get one (Score:2)
Hide their hide with the open source PIHOLE DNS Server, and if that not enough, we can make a DPI Firewall pluggin with schannel or the like and analyze these web content and web connection.
No google, you are not going to win that one. F... your ads.
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*Hide their ads...
If they break my recipe... (Score:5, Informative)
Currently I use my own VPN to block ads, which consists of a Pi-hole [pi-hole.net] server that uses blocklists at the host file level + PiholeVPN [skerritt.blog] in the cloud, with a recursive DNS server [pi-hole.net] so I can bypass Google's, CloudFlare's, etc DNS completely.
On the Android client I use the standard Wireguard client, (sourced on Github also). I sure hope my recipe doesn't break soon. It's been working extremely well for quite a while already.
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I don't think they will. This will not be going after configurable VPN apps, but rather other apps that implement an internal fixed and non-configurable VPNs. Think the likes of Opera / Brave which direct browser traffic through VPNs. Or locked down non-configurable VPN software.
A standard wireguard VPN selecting your own private VPN server somewhere couldn't legitimately be blocked, heck that functionality is baked into the OS itself, you don't even technically need to download anything from the Playstore
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DNS66 is a self-contained version of this (Score:2)
Don't be evil wasn't that hard was it? (Score:2)
Well this is going to get interesting. We currently use a bunch of different VPNs on various devices to make sure our ads in other countries are being shown correctly and we haven't done something stupid like post the wrong ad to the wrong market. Does this mean we are going to get the ads for the country we are VPNing too (like now) or local ads.
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This policy calls out redirecting ads "for monetization purposes." That is, an app that uses the VPNService API so that users from Moldova appear to ad providers to be in the USA so the app creator gets more money.
If a bona fide VPN makes you show up in a different country and so changes what ads you get served, that's an entirely different story.
In a sentence... (Score:3)
Google is forcing spam onto you.
OK fine (Score:2)
Other way around. (Score:2)
Knock off this crap where your operating system is just a delivery mechanism for your bullshit.