2y ago

"Uninstall survey" after uninstall an app - how is that possible?

On a throwaway Samsung Galaxy with American ROM, I installed some Chinese apps. When I uninstall them, the browser opens with a specific "uninstall survey". How that is possible? Are they exploiting some os weakness or it's permitted by the apk uninstall API?

The bad actors are:

sogou keyboard
Tencent video
weibo

8 comments

If you are running Android <11 then apps could see the list of apps installed on the device https://developer.android.com/training/package-visibility
Pure speculation (and how I would do it) is to have apps A, B, C check periodically the list of installed packages and if one of them disappeared from the list I would trigger this survey. Of course that requires that all apps are from the same developer, and it won't trigger this survey on the last app uninstall

8 comments