Are you an Android developer with applications on the Play Store? Well, you might want to know that Google is about to publish your phone number on the Play Store for everyone to see.
We’re renaming the “Contact details” section on your app’s store listing to “App support” and adding a new “About the developer” section to help users learn more about you. This may show verified identity information like name, address, and contact details.
Google is doing this in an attempt to “build user trust”, but to me it seems rife for abuse. Does this really mean every small indie developer is going to have their personal phone number published for all to see? I also wonder what’s going to be displayed under Google’s own applications – it’s notoriously difficult to get anyone at Google on the phone, so will they be excluded from this new policy? Will they be allowed to link to a recording?
Thom Howlerda,
That’s the first thing I thought: Google are F’ing hypocrites.
Has anyone else been blocked from signing up to services by trying to sign up using a non-mobile phone number? I actually have a proper business line forwarded to me for business calls, but providers including google like to block such lines. As a rule I avoiding using my personal number for business, which is as it should be. But it sounds like Google’s policy may end up forcing a lot of developer’s to divulge their personal cell phone numbers against their will.. Is there any chance divulging personal details like name, address, phone, etc without permission violates the GDPR?
If i made a scam app, why would i put a real number in there in the first place? I would probably use a burner sim. This only hurts good developers.
Absolutely. This is Google’s attempt to avoid having to actually police their own app store, by supposedly introducing a roadblock to scam app makers, but instead it’s going to have a chilling effect on legitimate indie developers, and of course large corporations who make apps (banks, retailers, etc) will be exempted from it. Scammers will just use a burner number as NaGERST suggested, and make it part of the cost of doing (illicit) business.
This is a terrible idea all around.