zlacker

To me it seems like fighting teen pregnancy by preaching abstinence. We should be teaching a higher baseline of computer literacy, and providing more secure systems that keep the user in control and in the know when it comes to their own device and the software running on it.

Attacking the problem by reducing user freedoms and increasingly monopolistic control is not the answer, even though Google's PR department would tell you otherwise.

>>soulof+(OP)
As far as I know the reason you don't preach abstinence, beyond enforcing your morals, is that it is not effective.

So the question on if this effectively reduce scams is the first question to answer.

>>nazcan+T6
Yeah, it's definitely a piece to the puzzle. I still think it's not so hard to prove that increasingly technical literacy, outlawing deceptive UX and language that prey on information asymmetry, and providing increased autonomy with more fine-grained and visible security controls is a net win for the population, whether or not this particular method of Google's is effective enough against spam compared to some baseline.

>>soulof+cc
Agreed. Android already has seriously big whitelisting requirement for installing applications from outside the Google Play store.

The correct way to do it would be to whitelist other good stores, and allow developer mode installs with an extra process that says explicitly I am extra sure this may be danger, but no. This would reduce Google's income streams.

The way I see it, it must be attacked the way default Internet Explorer was attacked.

>>soulof+(OP)
> To me it seems like fighting teen pregnancy by preaching abstinence.

More like fighting teen pregnancy by mandating chastity belts... With the same ultimate problems too: those most determined to overcome the block will make use of bolt cutters or their digital equivalent.