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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Moonrise2473@feddit.it to c/askandroid@lemdro.id

On a throwaway Samsung Galaxy with American ROM, I installed some Chinese apps. When I uninstall them, the browser opens with a specific "uninstall survey". How that is possible? Are they exploiting some os weakness or it's permitted by the apk uninstall API?

The bad actors are:

  • sogou keyboard
  • Tencent video
  • weibo
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[-] rozPierog@lemdro.id 6 points 1 year ago

If you are running Android <11 then apps could see the list of apps installed on the device https://developer.android.com/training/package-visibility

Pure speculation (and how I would do it) is to have apps A, B, C check periodically the list of installed packages and if one of them disappeared from the list I would trigger this survey. Of course that requires that all apps are from the same developer, and it won't trigger this survey on the last app uninstall

this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
18 points (100.0% liked)

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