Play protect flags app as malicious (false positive)

[dragonloverlord]

So it looks like good old Google has chosen to be as difficult as ever and decide to flag the ruffle app as being malicious and unfortunately that means pestering users with warnings about how evil this app must be...

Anyways from what I could gather you could try to appeal their decision (honestly I can't really imagine why they'd say no as the apps clean even on virus total) the way to do this would be to fill out the form here:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/contact/protectappeals

Alternatively should Google just not care or listen then it's probably worth mentioning that play protect insists on falsely detecting it as harmful and that no such issues exist as virus total proves as much.

For what it's worth I'm using the Fdroid version 0.251013 on Android 16 with play store and security / system patches all up to date.

[femdiya]

+1, installing from Droidify using Shizuku installer method, running Xiaomi 14T Pro Android 16, I've got the error too.

[dragonloverlord]

+1, installing from Droidify using Shizuku installer method, running Xiaomi 14T Pro Android 16, I've got the error too.

Yep that's exactly how it goes for me although interestingly if I install it anyways and go into the PlayStore and choose to rescan everything (Apparently you can't just rescan one app or even get any info as to why it doesn't like an app) it suddenly thinks everything is fine. Honestly this feels like some weird scare tactic of Googles for installing 3rd party Appstore apps as clearly if it was actually malicious in Googles eyes (erroneously or otherwise) then they wouldn't just reverse course the moment you rescan everything.

Anyways hopefully the dev filing an appeal will fix this.

Realistically though I feel like this maybe one of those anticompetitive things that just becomes an expected nuisance for non-PlayStore apps and if so an obligatory "Play Protect is lying. The app is fine. Please choose install anyway." will likely become common place. Although I would hate it if this became the standard as it's really inconvenient to have to deal with Play Protects constant nagging and the extra steps to install are less than optimal.