Develop Reference

Google Developer Account Terminated: What to do?

So we just launched a beta closed test, and our account was completely terminated. I believe the reason was a deceptive name.
We filed an appeal, but we're not sure what to do next. We had no idea our name was violating anything, and if this appeal doesn't go through, we have to publish this app. We some big financial backers, and getting the account terminated completely was kind of a shock to all of us.
So, what to do next, if the appeal doesn't go through? Should we make a new account, and republish the app? Should I contact someone and tell them I just need to change the name? We're kind of freaking out here.
Thank you.

Please write an email to googleplay-developer-support#google.com
Ask if they can reactivate your account with changing the name to resolve the issue. Otherwise sure you can pay 25€ to register a new developer account if that is an option for you.
Make sure your developer name (and your apps) are not deceptive, check if your app description matches to their actual features, check if your app and developer names are already used (simply google the names) and if you feel like it it is always a good idea to check copyright and name brands. (Trademark checks)
If you want to do a trademark check it is a good idea to consult a lawyer, however you can do a simple trademark check yourself which is almost always enough for a small android publisher. Go to a trademark research site for your region, for example UK and EU https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmtext . I can recommend to search for "text" and "contains any" to get the best results. For example text="adidas" contains-any in clothing will return that it is already registered, therefore you shouldn't call a fashion app "adidas" or a deceptive version like "adi-das" or alike.

Same here in US region. I used a name that's not a trademark or anything. It took them 2 months (which's supposed to be "Up to 7 days") to get back to me saying they won't reactivate my account. I've tried to appeal and reach their customer service (it shows "server error" on online chat and the online help page is a dead end too). You may seek a legal assistance to get their attention.

Transfer App to my developer account in Play Store and App Store

OK, so my company hired some broke company to develope the company's app. They developed a version for Android and for iOS. They published both versions under their developer account.
The thing is they offer a very poor service, so we have decided to get our own Developer licencenses and design a new app internally.
Our idea is to make a deal with the broke company, so they transfer the app to our account. I've read there is a procedure for this in both stores:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/Chapters/TransferringAndDeletingApps.html
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6230247?hl=en
My questions are:
Once the app is transfered to our account, can we substitute our new app for the old one, so it stays under the same name and keeps download statistics (I don't really care about ratings).
Is there any way the current app users can get an update notification linking to the new app if we don't have the old app's source code?

For the Apple App Store, this is entirely possible if they're willing to transfer the application to you (and the process is pretty simple!), but it appears you've already found that documentation. From a user's perspective, nothing changes; the app stays on their phone, and won't change at all. The next time you push an app update, even if the app has been entirely written behind the scenes, as long as you're publishing it to the same listing, users will receive the update as normal (App Store notification) and be none the wiser that ownership has changed. The only difference an end user would see is the "sold by" line in the store listing, if they checked.
I haven't tried the process on the Android Play Store, but from the description and the linked document, it appears the process would be the same. I mean, the link specifically says:
When you transfer apps to a different account, your apps' users, download statistics, ratings and reviews, content ratings, and store listing information are all transferred to your new account.
So, it looks to me like you'll be all good. One thing to note, though: even though you intend to do what's in your users' best interests by making the app "better," they've come to expect the app in the way it is currently. If you completely change the app in a single pass, they may be pretty shocked and turned off to it. Be careful about dropping an entirely new experience on them without warning.
Edit Note on the Android link, there was also this to keep in mind:
Our team can't transfer apps that offer subscription products.
If your app is subscription based, you may be out of luck on Android.

How to stop Google Analytics Bots, referral spams in OS Versions, Top Device Models entry for Android

I'm surprise to see statistics in Google Analytics page for one of the Android app and noticed the following strange informations
Apple iPhone in Top Device Models
Strange OS names entry in OS Versions :
Macintosh Intel 10.10
Linux x86_64
Windows 7
(not set) (not set)
Note:
I have answered the the current possible solution, but that doesn't make corrections to the available old data sets please let me know any ways to correct the old data sets and get out of the cons mentioned in my answer!

Bots and referral spam are two different things, the answer you posted will only help with bots. I am going to refer to the article about removing referral spam here
Normally we say there are three types of junk visits:
Ghost referrals like the darodar / ilovevitaly / cenoval
Creepy crawlers like semalt (a.k.a. best-seo-solution.com) and fake referrals like maridan.com.ua and blog.ranksonic.com.
Well behaved bots and spiders
Issue Number 1
I suspect data being inserted directly into the Analytics account directly though the measurement protocol. I say this because I have several old Google analytics accounts that are showing hits, the websites for these accounts no longer exist and haven't existed in years. I also have an old application account like yours that no longer has any data sent to it that shows data daily. The only way for data to be inserted into them is if someone is doing it directly, the hits are coming from known referral spam sites (the big list). There has been a lot of talk on the net lately on how to deal with the first two problems. Google has not come with any solution as of my writing this. The article gives a few very good ways of dealing with it. here
Idea of how its done google+ post
Tip: It appears that they are currently only targeting Web Property 1. so if you say make UA--xxxx-2 there will be no spam inserted.
Issue Number 2:
This will be hard to detect, they are actually thing your site. A filter on the known bad crawlers helps.
Issue Number 3
The answer you posted is correct but will only help with this: Bot and Spider Filtering. Its also kind of old.

Note: I have answered my own question for Bot and Spider Filtering , please provide if any better solution for the Cons mentioned below and avoid referral spam
Google Analytics Google team announced Introducing Bot and Spider Filtering to get away with referral spams,bots in Analytics Entries !
Introducing Bot and Spider Filtering
Many of you have shared with us that it’s hard to identify the real
traffic that comes to your pages. That’s why I’m pleased to announce
that we’re adding bot and spider filtering.
You can simply select a new checkbox option which would be included in
the view level of the management user interface. This option would be
labeled "Exclude traffic from known bots and spiders". Selecting this
option will exclude all hits that come from bots and spiders on the
IAB know bots and spiders list. The backend will exclude hits matching
the User Agents named in the list as though they were subject to a
profile filter. This will allow you to identify the real number of
visitors that are coming to your site.
Nestlé has been testing it and has found great benefit:
“The Bot filter solution is essential for getting deeper insights.
View level availability let us stay fully aligned with Best Practices
provided to all site owners. Very easy to use, understand and
communicate across thousands of Google Analytics users.” ~ Katarzyna
Malik, Nestlé Google Analytics Specialist
Happy Analyzing!
Posted by Matthew Anderson, Google Analytics Team
Steps to enable Bot Filtering:
Go Google Analytics home page and click on the Admin tab.Click on View settings
select Bot Filtering to get rid of known bots and spiders option.
This will remove the spam hits from their analytics for only upcoming analytics data. So this solution has two cons!!
Cons:
Historical data will not be affected by this option, i.e. spam hits
which were made in the past will remain in your data, Google will
only filter your future hits.
Google promises to remove hits from known bots, which means that the
time from the new bot appearance to the moment when it will be
included in the Google filter list can be indefinitely long. I use
this solution for the last week though and didn't find any new bots
breaking through the filter
Ref:
SO POST
techcrunch
G+
Blog

Google OAuth Authentication suddenly fails and issues "disabled_client"

We run a web application with a Java Script- and an Android front end. We use Google IDs with OAuth for authentication. Everything worked find until today authenticaiton suddenly stopped working. There was no new software version deployed or any operational changes. Now, when a user tries to log on via the browser application, Google issues
401. That’s an error.
Error: disabled_client
The OAuth client was disabled.
Request Details
scope=openid profile email
response_type=code
redirect_uri=https://***.net/signin-google
state=***
client_id=******.apps.googleusercontent.com
That’s all we know.
When logging in via Android App, authentication fails too, GoogleAuthUtil.getToken raises an unspecific exception.
I couldn't find much information when googling for this error message. Some say, one should try to change the application name in the consent screen. This didn't help in my case.
In developer console I noticed, that I cannot create a new Client ID for this project. I always get a technical error ("Server Error Whoops! Our Bad.") with a tracking number. Seems to be related.
I have a total of 7 Client IDs registered for this project and 3 public API access keys.
Is it possible, that Google explicitly disabled our project? That's how it actually feels. For what reason? I didn't get any notification. Our product is an application for access control, nothing special or illegal here.
Any ideas? This is a production environment, so for us the problem is absolutely severe.
Thanks for any help!

In the meantime we found out, that our Android App was removed from the Play Store and we got following notification:
This is a notification that your application, <...>, with package ID <...>, has been removed from the Google Play Store.
REASON FOR REMOVAL: Violation of the Personal and Confidential Information provision of the Content Policy.Please refer to the policy help article for more 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 are very careful about the data inside our application and we take privacy and security extremely seriously as the hole app is about security and our customer's trust is absolutely essential. However, we recently introduced a feature that periodically sends the LogCat output to our servers for debugging reasons. Our app is in an early preview state which we make clear in the app description. It's used by a very limited number of people as it can only be used with a special piece of hardware we provide. The LogCat output only contains data from the app itself, no confident data of any kind. We published a couple of related apps and not all have the feature even included but all were suspended. However, we guess that this feature is the reason for removing.
Edit
In the meantime we wrote an appeal via the form provided on Google Play. The ban was removed from Google Play and the related Google OAuth Client shortly after.
We were informed, that our App collects names of running tasks and sends them to our servers, which is not the case. However, we used the crittercism library and the crittercism docs suggest to require the "GET_TASKS" permission, what we did. I don't think, that Crittercism is considered as dangerous as it's used by lots of applications. But maybe the combination of a Logging Service on the one hand and the GET_TASKS permission on the other hand, although not dangerous in our case, triggered some automatic rules at Google.
To fix this we simply removed Crittercism and all related permission requirements as it wasn't very useful for us anyways.

Best approach to identify if user paid for an app on google play

I seem to have reached dead-end as to how may i create a proper model which plays well under a scenario that i have in mind.
The scenario is as follows; User purchases an application from Google play. At run-time i request user credentials (Google account associated with current device) which i then transfer to a web-service. At that point the back-end service tries to Auth user and identify if they have actually purchased the application in question and only then return any data relative to the request. (keep in mind that any request in general, as we are talking about a content based application, to the web-service at any point of the run-time life-cycle must always pass through the above pipe).
Now the reason for the above scenario being so specific is for the following reason;
-I would like everything to be managed by the end service rather than having any Auth process running natively as it may easily get bypassed. What i mean is that as long as anyone can decompile the application on their device, inspect the code, recompile it to their needs, have full access to any file if the device is rooted or even be allowed to clear any data related to the application by simply pressing the "clear data" option from android's application settings..... i do not see any other viable scenario other than the one i described above.
Now having said all of the above my problem is that it seems that Google does not like this specific scenario with both Google play developer api and Google+ api.
So i would really appreciate your comments, thoughts and any related materials you may have to offer in regards to the scenario i mentioned and ways to tackle down this problem.

I don't know of any such API that you can use. Why not try LVL, which would make sure that it's actually downloaded from the Android market? And if it's a paid app, the user must have definitely paid for it.
As far as decompiling is concerned, try Proguard. It's not 100% perfect solution, but it's pretty hard to break it.
Now, coming to the content. If you don't want anyone else to steal your content, then encrypt and save it. You can have a pretty good encryption mechanism that works with your web services, which would ensure that it's very very difficult to break.

What's wrong with using LVL and ProGuard? These tools were designed specifically to address your concerns with license verification and reverse engineering, respectively.
And, really don't worry too much about the one in a thousand people who might try to get your paid app for free. If your app is any good, then you'll be making plenty of sales anyway.

If I've read your proposal correctly, that sounds like a gross violation of your users' privacy and would definitely be a violation of Google's ToS. Why would your users give you their private credentials? They aren't supposed to be given to anyone, so why should they trust you or your systems with them? You would also be liable if you got hacked and credentials were stolen.