Google Play store requires devs to provide physical address, will be viewable by everyone

From this article: http://www.greenbot.com/article/268...-now-list-physical-address-in-play-store.html

Basically, Google has given developers of paid apps (or apps with IAP) until September 30 to provide a physical address or have their apps removed from the store. This address will be viewable to anyone on the Play Store.

How do you guys feel about this? Are you comfortable with putting your residential address on the Play Store? If not, are you willing to rent a PO box for this?

 

I think its a fantastic move, and I hope every store in the industry supports it. As we have a registered business address with security. People working from home will just have to accept it's the nature of the beast and will work out better for all developers and customers alike having accountability.

It has my 100% support. It may even make google play a viable market.

 

But what good does it do? Seems to me you're just giving away more personal information (where you live if you're doing it from home, which many are) to thousands of random people.

 

How does this effect apps with ads?

 

The message from Google specifically says "paid apps or apps with with in-app purchases", but I wouldn't say that it's entirely clear at this point.

 

Because no shady business would ever use a proxy address/PO box...

I don't see how this is beneficial for any honest business and I sure as hell don't see how it hurts dishonest business.

 

Yay! Now spammers can show up at my door and try to rip me off by asking me to give them money to get my games higher on the download list in person!

 

I don't like it, but it's not new to me either. In Germany we have a law (called "Impressumspflicht") that websites of a commercial nature need to state their valid address easily accessible on their website, which would be the home address in the case of someone working from home like most indie devs. Nothing bad came from this that I have heard of except some spam and shady offers that you'd get anyway to your public e-mail address.

 

RockoDyne is right. Scammers already use proxy addreses or P.O. boxes. This does nothing for accountability. And to make matters worse, I don't even see a place to enter an address in the settings tab. Also, they really should be sending out emails and not hoping people happen across the notification in their developer console. I would have never known about it without this thread. Of course, I have no idea how long it's been there, so maybe they do plan on sending out emails.

 

No problems re: renting a PO box or if Google's policy kept home addresses private, but that could always change either way.

A registered business seems the way to go though. Incorporated years ago. Relatively small expense. (in the US anyway)

 

I don't see anything wrong with it; anyone that passes my house knows where I live(although I'd be personally using a P.O Box). What's the problem? If anything, it's going to help the flooded market. I don't really see the use for scammers, they'll either put up fake addresses or use a P.O Box.

 

Dont really agree with it being published... there are a lot of crazies out there... if your game went viral, this would be bad news.

 

They know where you live, but they don't know who you are. There's another thread about games that offend people. Imagine making a hunting game and having the Animal Liberation Front showing up at your doorstep. I don't know anything at all about GamerGate, and don't care to, but I know someone was receiving threats. Imagine how much more comfortable she'd be knowing that her address was tied so directly, and publicly, to her game. Imagine someone who just happens to live down the road from you buying your game and deciding to drop by for support. Imagine someone who hates your game because they don't think they should have to pay $0.99 for a pack of coins signing you up for all sorts of junk mail, or sending pizzas to you.

 

Ya. Consider Flappy Bird developer got death threats. Now some people might actually show up at his door.

 

WTF!!!!!!

this is terrible!!
what about murderers and rapists and stuff?

whats the googles CEO's and etc. physical home address?? id like to know.. ... for reasons

 

Well any business has nothing to fear. You can always kick in the door of the local corner shop if the milk is sour. You'll find that it takes a lot of effort to actually bother with face to face. Plus PO boxes, like you say are usable. So use them if you're worried.

I'd assume most complaints to come from people who didn't really have the right mindset to do proper business. For example it doesn't affect free apps.

1. why would you fear being attacked? are you making a product you know to be rubbish, and selling it on the store? or scamming people?

2. why would you complain about the cost of a PO box? are you not in the business of making money?

See, where money is involved, and business is involved, I think it's a pretty great thing to thin the herd so to speak. Sounds like a lot of people just want to throw any old crap out there for sale without fear of it offending or whatever. Things like this go a way toward cleaning up the worst of it.

 

German has some pretty awesome words!

 

Blizzard is a completely legitimate company, that had to run out of unmarked offices, because of all the crazies WoW generated.

So it is obviously very real that there are people that will take something so seriously they will go to a physical location to whatever end.

Im not that worried about it... if it becomes a problem, I would use a post box, but saying threats are completely idle is ignorant... granted most of them are, but there are ppl out there crazy enough to come and find you..

 

... personally.. i aspire to create .. ... uh.. possibly controversial interactable artwork, lol .. but i wouldnt be publishing on google anyway...

 

Wonderful... This will lead to even more swatting "pranks"...

 

I have nothing against it, but I do wonder what problem it's solving and/or for whom. As has been said, people being dodgy/making shovelware can just put a fake in there. Who's going to knock on doors for every developer to check?

 

Nah.. Just an excuse to implement a real world first person shooter scenario or a round of Tekken..your call.

 

A Glock would handle that issue without a word fired.

 

Sure, a disgruntled customer can come to your place of business and yell at you, throw a fit, whatever. But at the end of the day you get to go home to a separate space where you don't have to deal with it. If Google wants a physical address to thin out shovelware, great, but there's absolutely no reason to make that information public. And I know I mentioned po boxes, but we don't actually know of they will allow them.

Even if you plan on making a good product, recent events have shown how irrationally people can behave when they get angry about something. The lead Dev on call of duty gets death threats if he changes a variable on a gun. Maybe we're not making the next CoD, but having your address available opens you up to forms of greifing that take far less effort than a physical confrontation (pizza bombing, swatting, etc. as others have mentioned).

And some of us are not ready to run a proper business, being hobbyist developers.

 

Pretty sure most of the studios/HQ's I've seen were pretty well labeled. Hell I've seen a lot of companies with logo's plastered on their building.

Shots fired though are a different story.

 

I understand it was in the early days of success, before they had a giant campus... I read it somewhere along time ago.. never bothered confirming it, but its very believable.


Just go watch some of those videos of raging gamers... easy to understand how this could translate into so much anger you physically go somewhere to cause trouble.

 

People are saying to use a P.O. address, and maybe it's a regional thing, but I'm not sure that a P.O. box is acceptable. Look at the wording. It doesn't say 'mailing address' or 'postal address', which are the usual terms for differentiating between email and small mail. It says 'physical address', which, at least as I'm used to seeing it, is used to differentiate between your actual address and your mailing address. Google needs to clarify and explain this policy beyond some hidden message in a section of the developer console that nobody ever clicks on.

Second, Hippocoder, you are right, everyone can afford a P.O. box. But that same logic destroys your opinion that this will somehow clean up the crap from the store. A P.O. box costs about the same as the iOS developer fee that every single iOS developer must pay, and there is still plenty of crap on that store. It's absurd to think things will get substantially better when they aren't significantly better on a platform which already has a similar barrier to entry. The cost of a P.O. box isn't enough to do that.

Finally, any paying customer already has access to our addresses. It's right there in Google Wallet along with their purchase receipt. So this has nothing to do with protecting from scammers. Those protections already exist.

 

The difference is, that it's actually time consuming, has an expense and so on. Google can keep blocking these one after another and it runs up a considerable cost for the would-be scammer or time wasting shovelware bum. It's a bit like piracy, you make it time consuming and tiring.

Ultimately, it will have an effect. It will also have a negative affect for kids but I think thats great, since I don't think some 14 year old dork with a product he will never support, should be selling anything to begin with. Not least because it violates several laws. In any case, I'm not sure the market could get any worse. the Play marketplace is one of the most malware infested holes on the internet that has very little faith put in it by customers who get burned constantly. Something has to be done.

In the case of IOS, as you suggest, is also a barrier of entry. But iOS developers typically make far more on average, and customers aren't shy of buying. Very telling.

 

Christ have you guys seem the insane comments in some of the games now imagine those nut bars have acces to your home address. if your game went viral you like flappy bird you'll have to waste all your sweet cash on extra security

 

Actually, while I haven't used the Android market thing in ages, when I did I came away with the distinct impression that the iTunes App Store was indeed better, by a very long shot. Almost anyone can put almost any junk on Google Play, whereas on iOS you have to at least pass some form of QA where another human being with some sense of quality puts their eyeballs on your product. In both cases, it shows.

I'm savvy enough to have a reasonable grasp on what's likely to be good/bad, so I can navigate it well enough, but it doesn't change the fact that Google Play feels far dodgier than the iTunes App Store. (Which as a user I also don't think is curated nearly heavily enough either.)

 

Is the apple store app verification still performed by a human though? Im assuming it is, but im not sure.

They must have an army of verifiers if they do.

 

I believe it's partly automated, partly a human check. I haven't brushed up on the guidelines in a while, but I remember there being many things that wouldn't be easily automated - UI design constraints, content rules, stuff like that.

Also, last time I submitted an app I think there was still an area to put notes for the person checking it out.

 

Google Play has come a long way since the days when it was called the Android Market. At least from my perception of it. I don't see the same type of crap on there as I did back then. I guess their rankings algorithm has improved enough that the really crappy stuff just gets buried. Which to me is a perfectly fine solution. Why do I care if some 14 year old kids has crap on their if my potential customers don't have to sort through it to find my game? iOS does have reviewers, but they don't really reject things just for being crappy. They do help keep malware and other shady apps off of the store. But Google has way more than enough money to do the same for Google Play. They just don't want to spend it. They don't even have convenient ways for developers to contact them. I feel like I'm getting something for the $100 I give Apple. $100 for a P.O. Box to stay on Google might be dirt cheap, but it still feels like I'm taking the cost for their decision to cheap out on proper curation of their own market. If Google gave even the slight inclination that they even remotely care about taking any responsibility of their own for what goes on in the market, it might annoy me less.

Or if they gave a way to contact them so we can get clarification on these things, it might also annoy me less. Google provides almost nothing to developers. As I said, they haven't even bothered to email us yet and tell us about this change. Most of us found out about from forum posts. I'd love to be able to ask them if a P.O. box is acceptable. If I have to give my home address, that isn't going to help my opinion on the matter. It's one thing to have people come to your place of business. It's another entirely to have them mistake your home address for a business address and show up on your doorstep.

You can see what I'm talking about regarding their choice of words in the link below where they describe a physical address thusly, "Physical address describes the actual location of an entity in the form of a street address. It cannot be described in terms of a PO Box or Rural Route address." That is what Google is asking for.
https://grants.hrsa.gov/webexternal/help/hlpPage.asp?hF=help_Addresses

 

So, use a PO box. You spend a little money to make money. Does that not alone cut out half the crap?

Because it's about buyer confidence. Due to so much crap being released every day, chances are they'll get burned at some point. We're talking about normal people, not programmers on the Unity forums. Normal people search for things. This might or might not mean your app is the one being dead and buried.

 

Exactly, think about flappy bird and other big games like that having their information exposed.

 

It depends on what you mean by crap. If by crap you mean "scam" apps, I'm not sure putting in a pay wall will help much. Wouldn't the successful scammers have some money from their previous scam?

Also, I'd think it would take a lot more effort to add IAP's to your app than it would to register a PO box.

 

HEY! im mostly normal.

 

My initial assumptions with this type of thing is that it is not for the benefit of customers or developers. If I had to guess it would involve legal aspects. Maybe a potential requirement by some governments and Google is just playing it safe by hitting everyone with it.

 

My first reaction:
Shady people, scammers, and spammers will just use a fake address or a PO box and this will have little to no effect on them.
Honest indie devs working from home who don't have the foresight (or knowledge) will often use their home address and open themselves up to a market that is getting known for having a very dark side to it in regards to personal harassment etc.

I see a large increase in that Swatting phenomenon in the near future (that thing where someone doxes someone and calls in a fake hostage situation to their house).

 

I wouldn't be quite so concerned with having my address out. Worst case scenarios are typically twenty pizzas get ordered to your address. The likelihood that someone shows up at my doorstep is next to non-existent.

 

Either way, they're not doing it.

 

Maybe they SWAT your address. That would be cool, right?

 

You guys know it's not that easy to hide if someone really wants to find you, right? You've got a paper trail as long as your arm. For a start, if you have a website, chances are its listed under your name. Secondly, any kind of legal proceedings means that google or apple have an obligation to pass on your point of contact, which will usually be your address.

I mean this hiding stuff? you're mostly just hiding from people who don't want to bother finding you. So far I haven't seen any cases of actual harm happening. Just a lot of mouth. Kids have a lot of mouth online.

 

So far, I haven't seen a lot of cases, or any actual data supporting the benefits of this program. "Kids" aren't the only ones who have a lot of mouth online.

 

I can understand the initial opposition, but really, what are the odds of getting unwelcome visitors?
Apps are being sold around much of the world, how many people are going to go through the time & expense of traveling a long distance to harass a developer at their home address? The chances one of those weirdos who would do such a thing living in the same town as you are slim to nil. There is a much greater chance some crazy person you inadvertently cut off on the freeway will follow you home and hassle you.

Then we have to consider the realistic odds that your app will even get so popular to gain so much attention to attract rabid fans like the case with Flappy Bird. Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but let's be honest, 99.9% of us are not going to have something go viral.

After giving it a little thought, I agree with hippocoder, the increased level of accountability could improve the quality of what's available on the Play store.

 

What? They're not exactly common, but I've definitely heard of a few cases. Isn't that the whole point of "doxing" - to encourage harassment?

As for "Just a lot of mouth", is this a "sticks and stones" thing?

 

This whole idea is really unreasonable. Accountability on the internet should never be equal to publicly giving the address to the home where you and your loved ones live. There are many ways to verify information like this behind the scenes.

Yes, if someone looks hard enough they can probably dox a person without this added information. But a lot of the people using Google Play as a platform are not companies with B&M office space and this move just puts it all out there for any unstable person who has problem/issue. If this is an attempt to curate the market then it is truly a messed up idea that has the potential to get people hurt in the process.

 

It fits into Google's ongoing way of making stuff "real".
First Real names in Google+ and now this.
I guess its will not be a big problem , and if all Android developer would cry out loud Google will hear it.
But my guess is that will not happen so the address requirements will go on.

 

Have you seen confirmation that a P.O. box is acceptable, and that Google's terms are just using the term "physical address" differently than most other documents do?

Buyers must really hate Amazon, Ebay, Kagi and and all of the other payment processors, the Apple Appstore, the Microsoft market, Blackberry world, Samsung Apps, Zazzle, Etsy...can I stop now, or do I need to go on? The buyer confidence argument is BS. All of these stores allow people to sell stuff without providing a physical address and none of them have hoards of people scared to send money to them. That Google Play has so many problems is a reflection on Google's poor curation, not lack of contact info. And again, buyers CAN get your address if there is a problem. It is right there in their Google Wallet. Is it too much to ask for then to have to take a few extra clicks and be actual customers? That extra time and requirement to spend money may quell any knee jerk reactions that angry people may have to sign me up to receive who knows what in the mail.

Having the address published so directly in the store also gives the perception that it is a business address instead of a home address, which may change how people use the information. I don't mind being treated like a business. I am one. But I want my address to continue to be respected as my place of residence. I don't want people driving by my home looking for a job, or asking for a refund, or trying to sell me something. I don't want them mailing me stupid crap, and I certainly don't want the mailing me stuff to get even because they think I am being greedy for asking them to pay $0.99 for a game. The assumption that nobody will travel hundreds of miles for this is only valid if nobody in your own town ever comes across your app. If they do, and they don't realize that it is a home address, they very well may make that drive. When they get there and realize it's a home, maybe they turn around. Maybe they don't. Maybe they are crazy enough not to care at all. I don't mind the possibility of dealing with crazies at an office that I can leave when the work day is over, but my home is a different story.

 

The first fallout will probably be the use of web scrapers to filter the physical addresses of paid and free-to-use apps with at least 500,000 downloads.

Addresses should be provided only on a need to know basis to actual legal and financial departments and usually with the foreknowledge of the addressee. A better alternative might've been a "premium vendor" category where individuals or companies could voluntarily provide as much information about their operation to separate themselves from the vast majority of fly by night operations.