Notification from google Play Store

Issue

Today i received an email from Google Play Team. How can I find which library or SDK is violating the conditions of the Google Play? Here is the content of mail:

This is a notification that your application, is currently in violation of our developer terms. REASON FOR WARNING: Violation of the Personal and Confidential Information provision of the Developer Distribution Agreement:

(Dangerous Products): Apps that collect information (such as the user's location or behavior) without the user's knowledge (spyware) … are prohibited on Google Play. (Personal and Confidential Information): We don't allow unauthorized publishing or disclosure of people's private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, government identification numbers, driver's and other license numbers, non-public contacts, or any other information that is not publicly accessible. We have determined that one or more Ad SDKs or libraries used in the above app facilitates the transmission of the list of installed apps on the user’s device to a server without conspicuous disclosure to the user that this is happening. This violates the above policy provision. Please evaluate any third party libraries for compliance and/or consult your Ad SDK provider(s) for further information if necessary.

Your application will be removed if you do not bring it into compliance by removing the ads sdk or library from your app, or updating to a compliant version of the SDK(s) or library(ies) within 30 days of the issuance of this notification. If you have additional applications in your catalog, please also review them for compliance. Note that any remaining applications found to be in violation will be removed from the Google Play Store.

Please also consult the Policy and Best Practices and the Developer Distribution Agreement as you bring your applications into compliance.

You can also review this Google Play Help Center article for more information on this warning.

All violations are tracked. Serious or repeated violations of any nature will result in the termination of your developer account, and investigation and possible termination of related Google accounts.

The Google Play Team

Solution

WOW!

exactly the same mail I received from Google play 2 days back! Word by word same. Great, So the issue 100% is the permission settings for the Flurry and TapStream SDKs. I just contacted Flurry/Tapstream for this, awaiting a reply from them.

By the way I checked Tap Stream here

You can clearly see they have asked for adding an intent under the application tag

 <receiver android:name="com.tapstream.sdk.ReferrerReceiver" android:exported="true" >
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="com.android.vending.INSTALL_REFERRER" />
    </intent-filter>
</receiver>

This is used to get the list of apps installed just to record analytics to count the App installs and see how many users are still using the App.

but regarding the Location collecetion [Dangerous content] I still have to figure out.

One possible measure I have thought of doing is adding an EULA before letting user use the app, on the first run. It makes sure that my back is covered. Additionally, you can also add permission for FINE_LOCATION under manifest. Since it is for sure that one/both of the SDKs are using user location.

Good question! Will update as soon as I receive any updates.

UPDATE

Finally, I received Mail from Tapstream, they are saying that they have made changes according to the Google's Policy change on November 15 2014 hence, asked me to change the SDK version to the lastest one. Quoted here

Hi there,

Tapstream has updated its Android SDK to comply with a recent Google Play store policy change.

Due to this policy change, a minor component of Tapstream's device identification process can no longer be collected by the Android SDK. This change will not impact your tracking.

To avoid any app approval issues on the Play store, you should deploy this new SDK as soon as possible.

You can find the updated Android SDK here: tapstream.com/developer/android/sdk

The updated SDK is a drop-in replacement; no other changes are required. If you need any assistance, or would like further information, just reply to this email.

I hope that might serve as a solution apparently.

Answered By - sud007