Android :: Piracy Protection
Oct 14, 2009
I am no security expert and have not thought this out all the way, but could a workable solution to the pirating problem be something like this:
1. The market clients (like Google Market, AndAppStore, SlideME) could record on their servers some kind of identifier about who bought the app and perhaps what Android device it was bought for. They already capture the who information.
2. Android apps that care can, on first launch, ask the user about their identifier and what service they bought the app from.
3. The app, or the servers that support the app, can query, via http, the market client service to ask did so-and-so get this app from you?
4. If an affirmative response can be had then the app is not pirated. Otherwise the app is pirated
Google Market, AndAppStore, SlideME, etc... will need to make such a service available, via http.
It would be straight-forward to generate a list of installed market clients for the user to select from. The market clients may even be able to supply the user identification so user does not need to enter it.
The application could retrieve from its servers the list of market clients is believes are legitimate in order to prevent the bogus clients from spoofing it.
If you installed an app w/out a market client and the app did not intend for such an installation to happen, like on rooted phones using adb, then the app is pirated.
And finally, could this process be invisible to the user and just involve communication between the app and installed market clients and the market clients servers and the apps servers?
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Jul 25, 2010
How do you manage your activation on android market since this crappy market doesn't offer anything for dynamic licensing as other store like handango, mobihand app world etc. How do you protect your full copy from piracy?
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May 4, 2010
I've spent the last few weeks developing a new tool to stop piracy of my paid apps on the Android Market. In a nutshell, licensing is tied directly to purchase verification. There is no license server to manage, no key for the user to enter. User experience is basically uninterrupted from normal application purchase.
I'm excited about this, as my paid apps are now reaching piracy rates as high as 90% on some days,with the average somewhere around 75%. For pirated apps, purchase verification (and subsequently licensing) will fail after a certain number of attempts, and pirates will be left with anything from a "buy me" nag, to a disabled app (behavior is configurable).
Android Market is the only supported purchase validation target so far. Others will be forthcoming if demand warrants.
This isn't a perfect solution (I have yet to find a perfect licensing solution), but I feel it is the best balance of security, features, and workflow that I've seen to date.
You can find a write up, download, and purchasing information here: http://keyeslabs.com/joomla/index.php/projects/auto-app-licensing
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Nov 16, 2009
So looking at it a different way ...
Are there any popular android apps that are not suffering from massive piracy?
I had a quick hunt around and could see that MyBackup Pro asks for a Google Checkout number and Copilot also requires a code on starting up.
Maybe there's something we can all learn by seeing how other app developers are dealing with this issue.
Does anyone know how effective these measures are? Has anyone seen any other techniques that have worked.
Its getting very tiring reading how pirates feel they have some right to steal apps from hard-working devs.
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Aug 19, 2010
This is the first time I've released a paid app. I was wondering if there was a way to track piracy rates of my app.
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Jul 29, 2010
Apps can choose to require connection to google to verify they are legit EVERY TIME they are opened .....so if u happen to be offline then u won't be able to open the app. Android Market apps now have to check in with licensing servers to confirm legitimacy. i have no problem paying for apps, but if a cocktail mixing app refuses to open to give me a drink recipe because i happen to be not connected to wifi or a data connection then i would not buy that app ....as it is i do not have an always on data connection.
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Jan 16, 2010
I was just wondering what your thoughts are on having some law enforcement on your side as well as legal protection. As an independent developer its hard to afford legal nonsense like this. In your experience has it been worth it to include legal agreements with your apps and do you have protection like a LLC to protect yourself from being sued into oblivion?
Also what licenses are freely available that might be of interest?
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Aug 31, 2010
I'm having a lot of issues where people can't even find my app in the Android Market. It appears that it's all because of copy protection, which I WISH I had never even seen, much less activated in my app. So, can Google PLEASE, response and let me know what will happen if I disable it now? What will happen to my existing customers? I've not seen a single definitive answer on this topic.
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Jan 14, 2010
I have "Copy Protection" turned on for my app, but now i want to remove it Will there be any problems if i remove it now?
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Nov 12, 2009
I'd love to revert to no copy protection on our games for a number of pressing reasons, but these bugs bit us pretty bad last time I tried.
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Jul 5, 2010
I have an app with Copy Protection on. Since a number of users have reported being unable to find the app on Market since upgrading to 2.1, I have researched the issue and copy protection seems to be the culprit. Turning off copy protection is the answer, but it seems that it leads to file access problems and can require a reinstall, which is not a very good user experience.
However, this ought to have been fixed in 1.6 which means I should be able to turn off copy protection and everything is ok. But some people have still encountered this issue and their users had to reinstall. So, my question is this, if I turn off copy protection, will all users have to reinstall the app? Will only 1.5 users have to reinstall (30%)?
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Mar 20, 2010
Has anyone turned off copy protection on their app recently? We're finding that Motorola Backflip users can't see our paid apps, so we'd like to turn off copy protection as it doesn't seem to prevent pirating. But, we're worried that existing users will lose their saved preferences. According to bug 2047, the issue was fixed in November 2009, but according to some discussions, it actually still exists. It'd be great to hear positive or negative examples from anyone who's tried this recently. We're also thinking of putting out a dummy app to test things out and will report back if we do.
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Feb 20, 2010
In my app, I access my sqlite database at the following hard-coded location in my code: /data/data/ com.mydomain.appname/databases/database.db
If I turn ON copy protection in the Market Place, will my app still have access to this location?
Or will I have to change it to something like: /data-private/data/ com.mydomain.appname/databases/database.db
(or something like this)
Since I have a Dev phone only, I have no way of testing to see if my app still functions normally after turning on copy protection.
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Jan 27, 2009
I didn't find any information about how works app copy protection. Where can I read something about it?
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Apr 26, 2009
1. When the "copy protection" checkbox was first introduced on Android Market, I heard about a lot of issues with people not being able to download etc. Have those issues been resolved now? If I turn on copy- protection on an app with over 10K active users, do I risk a major rebellion?
2. I'd like to sell my app on other stores like slideme, andappstore and handango. Since some of these just redirect the user to your own site to download the app, there needs to be a license key that authenticates the user and unlocks his app. I saw that andappstore has a framework for that (not sure if that will only work with them or is a generic solution). I'm looking for a free, generic licensing solution. Is there one that you know of or use? My concern is to not throw in a wrench in the process of user download and use of the app, where I start getting a ton of emails from people whose keys arent working or asking for new keys etc, where license support turns into a full-time activity.
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Feb 19, 2009
Off (Application can be copied from the device) On (Helps prevent copying of this application from the device. Increases the amount of memory required by users to install the application) AFAIK apps are *always* installed in device's internal memory. Right? Hence, apps can't be copied (with stock G1 w/o any mods).
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Jul 21, 2010
If I publish a new version of my application and remove copy protection will any of my users be impacted? For example if users using 1.6 and greater will not be impacted but users still running 1.5 would have to reinstall and resetup the application I could live with that.
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Nov 19, 2010
why if I set the Copy Protection ON from my developer console, my apps isn't available on many phones like Sony Ericsson X8 Q1.6 ?
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Oct 18, 2010
Does anyone use them and are they still needed? I have heard that Android has built in virus protection. In another I read that Android is not capable of getting viruses. Can anyone elaborate on this?
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Jul 13, 2010
I have an paid app currently selling in the market with its copy protection turned on. I'm thinking about turning this off in order to reduce the size of my app and allow the "move to sd card" function to work. I've read that, in the past, people were having issues when the dev switched the copy protection setting from off to on. Is this still an issue? If users are still having problems then I'll leave things as they are. I understand that copy protection isn't really helping and I should just leave it off, but since I've had it on through several updates now, I'd hate to cause my users grief by changing now.
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Nov 11, 2010
i am providing copy protection for Android paid applications by using Android Market Licensing mechanism. But it supports only for the paid applications. How can i provide copy-protection to Free application. Is there any alternatives?
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Nov 8, 2009
I have uploaded an update for my app on Android Market. And at the same time I have enabled the copy protection of the app. When I downloaded my the update, there was an exception and the app crashed. I had to reinstall it. After reinstall it worked fine...
Exception was: W/zipro ( 1103): Unable to open zip '/data/app-private/...': Permission denied D/asset ( 1103): failed to open Zip archive '/data/app-private/...' W/ResourceType( 1103): No package identifier when getting value for resource number 0x7f090000
Is this a know bug when switching to copy protection? Or is there another reason this error occured?
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May 25, 2010
For example, firstly download the app "ABC", "Open" button and "Uninstall" button will be displayed at the bottom of the screen when the installing is completed. Secondly, activate "ABC" by tapping this "Open", and tap HOME key when the app is running.　After that, restart the same app from the Launcher on the Home screen, and finish the restarted one from BACK key. Then, despite having closed the restarted one, the same app is displayed. (I forecast the cause, it is maybe the multiple activation of the app.)
Q1. Is it the problem as the specific of Android Market that multiple activation occurs when the app is activated with above process? If it's no problem, is the cause the app "ABC" which I downloaded? Q2. Is there any way to avoid the multiple activation in designing of apps?
About the copy protection of Android Market.............
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Jun 18, 2010
I own LG EVE (GW 620)....
1)I want to password protect my text messages.
Please suggest me any application which should be free to do that..
2)IF i get an app from internet source (download via PC and installed via Linda etc.) ,will it be full version of that app??
3)Is there any way i can transfer my text messages in phone to my PC and vice versa?
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Jul 20, 2012
I think android is missing one feature of daily use. It is sd card password protection. I want to protect my sd card data with password but I don't find any app or any thing to do this. on my old nokia cell , protecting sd card was very easy. I want to protect my sd card so if i lost my sd card then no one access files on my sd card ..........
At this time i have no nokia set so i want to know if my sd card is password protected and i put this sd card in my android set then what will happen??? will it work and ask me for password??????
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Jun 9, 2010
Anyone figure out a solution? I'm very careful with my phone, and my lens already has a few microscratches on it.
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Nov 1, 2009
What form of protection d you use for your hero (if any)?
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May 20, 2010
With some of the reviews mentioning that the EVO will lay directly on the camera's lens, is there a chance that the screen protection manufacturers will create a disc to protect the lens as well?It might not get trashed right away, but it would be nice to be able to swap out a disc rather than having permanently fuzzed out pics from the scratches on the lens.
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Jun 28, 2010
I would like to move my Family Guy episodes and perhaps Caddyshack or any other great movie to my DInc but alas iTunes has shut me down with AAC protection. Some of the other posts I saw suggested using Doubletwist which I downloaded on my Mac and seems like it would work, yet the files are still protected so that doesn't help. Another said to use FairGame to take the DRM protection off of the file so I can transfer them, but that didn't work either. Is there ANY easy answer that won't cost me anything or be difficult to do? Anybody out there already do this on their DInc?
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May 29, 2010
besides a seido case or any case... what are the alternative methods to prevent that camera from being scratched up? here are my thoughts
1. what if you used one of those screen protector and cut a circle to place onto the camera glass? will that degrade picture quality?
2. HTC Evo 4G Magnet Mount Conversion Lens, FREE Shipping, HTC Evo 4G PHONE Magnet Mount Conversion Lens what if you attached the included circular magnetic piece (kinda like a washer) to act as a spacer?
3. like the magnetic spacer, maybe add a small strip of rubber with adhesive on the back to raise up the top of the phone and create a very small space between the surface and the camera. similar to feets found under a laptop.
4. small adhesive rubber dots... like those placed on your laptop's bezel around the lcd
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