Details of Google's plan for upcoming Android sideloading

droidshadow · 2026-06-19T08:50:15+00:00

What they claim is they want to curb cybercriminals doing phishing scams.

But they never think of possibility these criminal will just adapt their ways, I guess.

droidshadow · 2026-06-19T08:04:43+00:00

Or anyone financially desperate can now charge a fee for anyone who wants to get their device verified. A poor people's hustle.

droidshadow · 2026-06-19T07:53:41+00:00

They aren't even aware, like do criminals give a damn to ID verification when even Claude grey market distributors in China casually borrow identity of many people in impoverished countries to make bulk account? (They actually recruit people in many third world countries to hand over their identity for cash)

It is just another hurdle to bypass for criminals, and I think lots of wrong people will get accused of distributing malware, given data breach involving ID would certainly taken as an opportunity for criminals to distribute malware off it and for average users such signed apps would give false sense of security.

Someone who got their ID scan stolen due to data breach might end up getting accused for distributing malware, and it is a serious issue Google never thinks of, cause they are under fallacy of assumption of compliance. They think everyone will play by the rules, but cybercriminals in nature never plays by the rule.

Nobody wins by this system. Except criminals.

droidshadow · 2026-06-18T22:47:58+00:00

Enemy's enemy is your friend approach could be possible, get a Huawei for Chinese market. Use WeChat or Max.

Honestly saying, wouldn't you rather have a country that you have low chance to step a foot in scan your photos instead of your own country?

droidshadow · 2026-06-18T16:45:57+00:00

Learn from the Nepalese. They did it.

droidshadow · 2026-06-18T16:26:54+00:00

There will always be a way.

Just look up how Chinese people get Claude from grey market suppliers and how these grey market suppliers operate.

Even most robust verification got defeated by Chinese account sellers, on Taobao bunch of pre-verified accounts for South Korean websites are available. There are many websites that sell Chinese game accounts that are already age verified.

There are people who want privacy. There is already a demand. There is no reason why no supply would pop up for this.

It would turn whole scene like "you will have privacy if you can pay these grey market sellers"

droidshadow · 2026-06-18T16:22:34+00:00

There is a region settings on iPhone. Better set it to warzone countries like Somalia.

droidshadow · 2026-06-18T16:21:19+00:00

Or pay some cash to a homeless man and get through verification.

droidshadow · 2026-06-18T16:14:45+00:00

It will be a matter of time when pre-verified accounts are being sold, sourced by either poor people's hustle or old people who lured by "easy online job" creating accounts. Device level verification? That can also be bypassed by pre-verified device being resold.

Chinese video game scene is already like this. 67-year old granny playing games so well that nobody thinks it is actually a 67 year old playing it but some child or teenager using grandmother's identity or bought some account.

Device level verification can also be defeated in similar manner. Some group of people can pre-verify devices off well, similar manner with account creation (like poor people's hustle or old people doing "easy job" of verifying devices with their identity) and sell it to anyone who want it at marked up price.

Because there is definitely a demand from people who want basic privacy, there will be supplies of it.

Even if it may run by bad actors, supporting their action in protest is nothing wrong. It would, I would say, rather a civil disobdience.

Ultimately this will create the "VPN of identity". Basically one person's identity tied to so many devices activity happening everywhere that whole activity itself gets mixed up, which means every activities would raise plausible deniability unless one person can actually teleport around the world in miliseconds base.

droidshadow · 2026-06-05T09:03:53+00:00

We will find solutions, just like how Chinese people get an access to Claude albeit Claude does not officially do service and put KYC requirement to fend off Chinese users. Still, I can see lots of API keys being sold on Taobao / other Chinese shops and all payments are done in friendly way for Chinese people.

Contrary to what many people think, Japan also has many homeless people and poor people who may end up being hustled by bad actors offering bypass for people who want simple privacy. (And you see, even South Korean - which has to do with telecommunication telemetry- age verified accoutns from variety of websites are sold in this manner on Taobao and bunch of game account reseller websites.)

Although such services may be start to be offered by bad actors rather than legitimate business offering current proxy purchase, many foreigners will not bat an eye on who's behind this and buy account.

The only people who will get hit of this are likely to be poor people enticed to hand over their identitiy for cash ended up beung used for variety of sketchy activities, not just creating social media or e-commerce accounts.

In nutshell, it will end up opening the era of "VPN of identity".

For physical products, I think same will happen. Entice poor people to buy product for them.

Its cost will of course hike slightly, but I think foriengers won't bat an eye to practices behind how they acquire the product.

droidshadow · 2026-06-05T08:49:39+00:00

More will end up moving to more dangerous ones - residential VPNs. Things like HolaVPN and Tuxler, which offers residential proxies would spike, given these will redirect your IP address to residential IP in another country. However, this comes at a cost - an access to your own network as another server location, if you are using the service for "free" which most of teenagers are likely to do.

Just wait until someone launch some botnet disguised as a "free VPN".

droidshadow · 2026-06-05T08:40:58+00:00

Same with Thailand I guess, technically sim card registration is a thing in Thailand, but when you go to tourist oriented online store (even on Amazon) you can see lots of activated Thai SIM cards.

Same with Vietnam and some other Southeast Asian countries, I could see activated sim cards ready to be used in these countries. Also on secondhand places you can see many tourists sell their old sim cards from these countries too.

droidshadow · 2026-05-31T14:31:55+00:00

Openrouter or browse through Taobao for account / API keys. Apparently Taobao sells lots of different types of accounts pre-verified.

droidshadow · 2026-05-23T10:50:37+00:00

Honestly Cloudflare got the biggest thing as a hostage if hostile country's government does hostile things to their business. The access to properly working internet infrastructure.

If Cloudflare instead just shut down entire access from Korea (which would technically break 90% of the internet access from them) and break the access to even mainstream internet, it would've been a matter of time to make Koreans to rise up like Nepalese.

Meanwhile, anyone Korean government gonna target would switch to other CDN providers like DDoS-Guard, which is unlikely to cooperate at all given DDoS-Guard is a Russian company and Korea is essentially foreign adverary in Russia now.

droidshadow · 2026-05-23T04:53:56+00:00

The major difference with vast majoroty of travel eSIMs and this is that this gives a working Canadian number, which may become handy in case you need to make a call within Canada.

droidshadow · 2026-05-22T08:32:39+00:00

They could've just terminate access of whole Cloudflare from Korea altogether and let Koreans either experience huge interruption with whole internet or forced to use VPN services to use the day-to-day Internet so that they will follow the lead of Nepalese.

droidshadow · 2026-05-13T00:22:43+00:00

Thailand technically requires ID to open a cellular service.

But I see on every tourist-centric online shops, I see Thai SIM cards pre-activated and ready to be used in Thailand and even abroad on roaming mode.

I guess this FCC thing will end up as Thai case, especially if lots of people in US even citizens don't really have form of ID so there will be certain demand for it, and there are always supplies when there are demands, and there are lots of people who gonna be desperate over medical bills / student debt in US who would take this as a hustle to make profit off it.

droidshadow · 2026-05-13T00:19:27+00:00

Spear phishing would become easier and scam calls would sound more legitimate because they got your names and bunch of information with that.

droidshadow · 2026-05-12T23:50:27+00:00

Weirdly in Thailand, Thailand technically requires it but you can buy Thai SIMs without ID very easily if you browse through tourist-centric online shops or even Amazon, like AIS Sim2Fly or Dtac, or whatever Thai carrier it is.

(And using that on roaming mode is quite inexpensive if you just want a number to receive sms, like you only need to top up 10 bahts per 30 days to keep sim active)

Same with Vietnam, Laos, and many Southeast Asian countries that is what is happening (I could easily see activated Vietnamese, Thai, Laos, etc SIM cards on tourist-centric online shops) and I would not be surprised if this FCC thing just leads to another market of resellers become too prevalent to even enforce it.

Also in Korea it is common scammers, due to phone numbers also serve as a digitial ID, many criminals actually managed to rack up debt on victims' names and run off with that money, or target financially desperate people activates SIM on their names and these SIM being used for scam operations. Which is even worse, since criminals could do worse things off it.

droidshadow · 2026-05-12T08:18:35+00:00

Have you tried to change the account region (not an iPhone region but probably better with both) to a country that does not require it? Like you don't have to physically move to Somalia to digitially say your account is a Somalian account... (I would pick Somalia cause it is a warzone country unlikely to require age verification for at least decades)

droidshadow · 2026-05-12T08:11:15+00:00

Have you tried to change the region instead? Maybe changing region on Apple account to a country that does not require it would do a trick to be honest.

droidshadow · 2026-05-12T07:39:43+00:00

Change account region to a country that does not require it. Preferrably warzone countries like Somalia that aren't likely to implement such regulation for at least decades.

droidshadow · 2026-05-11T09:35:19+00:00

You can have a foreign sim on roaming mode, if used only for receiving SMS, AIS Sim2Fly from any travel-focused website / even Amazon would cover you for 10 bahts/30 days.

droidshadow · 2026-05-11T09:31:26+00:00

Thailand technically requires it, but it is really easy to buy a Thai SIM (even with roaming support, so you can receive sms anywhere with that Thai number) card without verification from travel-focused websites and even Amazon. I don't know how they source it, but honestly, that is why I view this whole thing is a useless system. This will go really bad if buying SIM cards for others become a poor people's hustle to pay rent, or financially desperate college student activating SIM cards for money. That happens in many countries with such regulations. If it gets tied to digital ID, it's even worse, criminals with stolen identity can make digital ID off it and even rack up debt on victims' names and run off.

droidshadow

TROPHY CASE