Comments on: Android Market Hacked (Kinda Sorta)

By: don juan

don juan — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:18:07 +0000

Free + donate doesn’t work for developers that are trying to do this full time. People just don’t donate. And if the developer can’t spend time working on the app, then they can’t keep up with customer support emails and Android OS updates and the app quality suffers.

By: Adam E

Adam E — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:40:45 +0000

Developers should just make free & donate versions… that’s my opinion. But some already out there have ads in the free version only.

By: earl

earl — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:27:59 +0000

It does work for paid apps because they are kept in i think data/private-folder. I was apauled by Google’s stupidity.

By: Drew Buglione

Drew Buglione — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:08:21 +0000

The sad part is that this is almost as easy to do on the iPhone/iPod Touch thanks to jailbreaking. I can’t say I’ve never pirated anything, but it’s really just horrible that it’s as easy as it is to do so nowadays…

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:51:52 +0000

We have developed several apps and have the same problem with some people downloading and then returning. We were able to identify patterns based on where these people were as identified by Google Checkout. Its frustrating.

We’re spending literally thousands of dollars for development and getting ripped off daily by about 15% of the people downloading.
By not fixing this Google is encouraging us to take our marbles and go play on the Apple and Blackberry Application Markets.

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:38:52 +0000

Just a warning, you get what you pay for. If you download a rogue version of an APK, you really don’t know what you are getting and you are putting all of your personal information at risk. It’s very very simple to insert malicious logic into an existing APK and you would never know. Malicious hackers could hijack/wipe all of your personal data, such as contacts, emails etc.

If you do not get the application from a trusted resource, you do not not what you are getting. The Android market guarantees legitimacy and safety. If you download an app from the market or developer, you know who to blame if something goes wrong.

Let’s say you really are a cheap bastard and that 99 cents for that killer app just seems… well unnecessary, karma has a way of coming around and biting you in the butt. If something happens and all of your personal info is hijacked or wiped out, you only have yourself to blame.

In addition, passing around hacked applications while it will surely continue to happen, is only going to hurt the end-users in the long run. Developers will decide it’s not worthwhile to develop for Android anymore, or make users jump through so many hoops it yields a migraine to anyone wanting to use the application.

By: macho

macho — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:33:31 +0000

I put videos on my phone g1 phone but i cant view any videos it says my phone doesn’t support the file format ..what can i download to watch videos ..is there an app for this..

By: Jsn

Jsn — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:40:36 +0000

Does anyone have a quality “How To Guide” that they can share, so us with rooted G1s can rip an app?

By: jmon

jmon — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:47:49 +0000

ok im not going to hack to apps cause well it just wrong… and for most useful things there is always a free alternative but there is one thing they could do to at least protect the market and that’s make it to where you cant do refunds. which would suck and then only those willing to us torrents or whatever will be able to take advantage of this. but that comes with risk because of viruses “even though it maybe small” also i like to back up my apps and if they could find a way to stop that it would suck… say i want the new g3 or whatever is out in a year or so i could just up load the apps new my phone. there alot of cool honest things you could do with this. why does every one want something for nothing?

By: vendornet

vendornet — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Justo to tell you that google kicked us – developers from the paid apps. So if you have ADP1 you can not download a paid app or a copy protected app. So no stealing is able to be done, but users with rooted g1 can do it. So don`t blame us ;) We are sufferung the most…

By: KaniS

KaniS — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:59:52 +0000

There’s nothing Google can do about things like this. Yeah, their protection is about as simple as it could get, but no matter how complicated they make it, as long as you have root access to the phone, you can install anything you want, including a completely new operating system, and your new operating system is going to be able to get at the raw apk or whatever method they use to store the app. The phone has to be able to read the program and decrypt it, so as long as you can root it, disassemble the OS to find out how it’s reading/decrypting the program, you’ve got yourself a free app.
The only tactic that might slow down a pirate is to put a decryption “black box” in a hardware chip and sign the paid apps with a very long key only known to this black box. But as soon as someone finds some way to get that key (which might take a little while, but probably not forever), everything’s open again. This method obviously doesn’t protect any phones that are already out there.

As far as I’m aware, pirates have broken every method of copy protection ever made, so the only real protection is honest people and maybe harsh punishments for law breakers. Android apps are so cheap, I don’t know why anyone would go to much trouble to steal them anyway. Thus, I wouldn’t get too up in arms about this hack.

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:45:03 +0000

But…

I noticed with a root phone you do not see most of the paid apps.

By: phillip

phillip — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:06:26 +0000

Is there a website where it shows you a step by step sequence to show how to hack the android market?

By: Magnum Steele

Magnum Steele — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:40:20 +0000

Why not just post all of the downloaded apps on a file share torrent like thepiratebay or mininova, that way anyone who doesn’t want to pay can play. That would be cool to have a torrent app for the g1/android. Want to watch a movie, download it, play a game, no problem. Music, etc . . .

By: Kendon

Kendon — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:51:22 +0000

Thanks for this. I had my suspicions but wasn’t sure if they would charge you for reinstalling the apk. I already copy all my free apps with ASTRO(best file manager on the G1). But now I can get paid apps for free, Awesome! I just h8 paying for things. Lol