Google is restricting which applications can see all the other things you have installed
Google will before long be more selective about which applications on the Play Store can see the entirety of the other applications you have installed (through XDA-Developers). As Ars Technica brings up, your list of installed apps, innocent as it appears, can communicate to developers personal traits like dating preferences and political affiliations. So beginning on May fifth, 2021, developers should give an excellent motivation to why Google should allow you to get to information like that.
Android 11 applications that at present request the “QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES” permission can see the full list of applications you have put away on your gadget. However, Google as of late refreshed its Developer Program Policy and now believes that information to be “personal and sensitive user data,” limiting which applications are permitted to utilize it.
When the change becomes effective in May, applications can possibly utilize the permission if their “core user facing functionality or purpose, requires broad visibility into installed apps on the user’s device.” Examples of applications that will be allowed to keep utilizing this consent include file managers, browsers, and antivirus apps that need the information “for awareness or interoperability purposes.” Banking apps, digital wallet apps, and any other app that involves “financial transaction functionality” will get a pass “for security based purposes.”
Applications that don’t have a justifiable use case for the permission risk being taken out from the Google Play Store. All engineers who need to keep the consent in their applications need to finish a declaration form justifying their utilization of it.
On the off chance that you’re worried that developers could in any case abuse the permission, Google’s documentation obviously states it will bring the hard on offending apps, regardless of whether they’re new to the Play Store or simply updates to existing applications. Google could suspend applications and possibly terminate developer accounts.
