As of now, Google will be more selective about which apps on the Play Store will see other apps you have on your phone. According to Ars Technica, your list of installed apps, innocent as it seems, can communicate to developers personal traits like dating preferences and political affiliations.
As a result, Google will be taking action from May 5th, 2021 where developers will have to provide a very good reason for why they should let developers access info of such kind.
Android 11 apps that currently request the ‘QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES’ permission can see the full list of apps you have stored on your device. But Google recently updated its Developer Program Policy and now considers that info to be ‘personal and sensitive user data,’ restricting which apps are allowed to use it.
Apps that don’t have a justifiable use case for permission from their developers can have their apps be removed from the Google Play Store. All developers who want to keep the permission in their apps need to complete a declaration form justifying their use of it.
In case of any misuse from the company, their documentation clearly states it will come down hard on offending apps, whether they’re new to the Play Store or just updates to existing apps. Google could suspend apps and possibly terminate developer accounts.
Source: The Verge
