Scammers placing keywords related to a different app, hoping users get confused
Scammers placing keywords related to a different app, hoping users get confused
I'm pissed that I bought simple gallery pro because it respected my privacy, then because the dev sold his soul for a ton of money, it now rapes my privacy
F-Droid can help
Simple Mobile Tools got sold and probably will go the web extension way of scammers loading it up with malware to extract private info and sell it. Delete it now.
Just use the fork
Yes but the reason I purchased from play store (which has the side effect of donating an undeserved 30% to google) was that I could easily share the access with the family without too much effort, just send a link to them 😢
fyi, don't use simple mobile tools anymore, it's basically adware now, the project has been forked and renamed to fossify
he's searching for fossify, the fork of simple
I'm blind lmfao
@Moonrise2473@feddit.it There is a fork of simple mobile tools available at https://github.com/FossifyOrg
Judging by what OP was searching for, they're probably aware. And the scammers are too.
See here for the new permissions the Simple mobile tools apps require after it was sold to an ad-company. I think that speaks for itself: https://programming.dev/post/8634202
OP searched for Fossify - the Simple fork. That's the point here - the new owner of Simple has added the keyword 'fossify' so they turn up in the search results, which no doubt prioritises apps with higher install counts.
This is my general method to find and install apps:
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First hit F-Droid
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If F-Droid doesn't have it, hit the Play Store through Aurora. Carefully assess each and every candidate returned by the Play Store search by searching for feedback on DDG, as I treat anything served up by Google as adware / spyware even if the Play Store says it's free of ads, doesn't need permissions or it's open source.
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If the Play Store doesn't have it (an older version of an APK I specifically need for instance) hit APKPure or Aptoide. Download each promising APK manually, unzip it, look for sketchy things in the archive manually, then run the APK through Hypatia before sideloading it, because I treat anything served up by APKPure or Aptoide as malware.
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In my experience, play store has been declining year over year and I'm now finding useful apps in fdroid more and more while finding trash in play store
I'm not saying play store is all trash, but if I scroll for 10m in both, I have a much higher chance of finding a useful app in fdroid than in play store
Even for games, but fdroid kinda has no games so can't compare .. I can just say play store is declining there too or I'm too old to find a game to enjoy
I only use the play store to keep critical apps (banking and security) updated. Everything else comes from Aurora.
Fossify is not even in the play store. I searched for it online and found the GitHub repo, it's only available via f-droid and IzzyOnAndroid, so yeah, you can't find it in the Google play store.
I switched to using using Obtainium to install directty from dev repos as much as possible, and am adding Fossify's projects as they release. IMO, It's the best way to ensure you get the app you want, without letting middle-men push their agenda or mine your data.
Most typical android user experience
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It has nothing to do with third party app stores.
Someone made an app that was genuinely very good. Then a company wanted to buy the app. The developer sold the app. The company loaded it with whatever spyware they wanted and pushed it in an update.
Now the app is garbage. Sadly it happens all the time. It happened to me right after I bought a year subscription to private internet access.
But to be clear this can happen on any platform or App Store official or not.
I don't think this is as big of risk on F-droid because the apps are screened and compiled from source.
Just don't go adding third party repos.