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I received this email a few weeks ago:

Issue: Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID policy and section 4.8 of the Developer Distribution Agreement

Google Play requires developers to provide a valid privacy policy when the app requests or handles sensitive user or device information. We’ve identified that your app collects and transmits the Android advertising identifier, which is subject to a privacy policy requirement. If your app collects the Android advertising ID, you must provide a valid privacy policy in both the designated field in the Play Console, and from within the app.

But the problem is that I have no access to the source code of the affected app because my laptop was stolen a few months ago and I did not back up the code for that app. So I have a few questions I need to ask.

  1. Can I update the policy in the console alone without updating the app?
  2. Can I just disable the AdMob ads completely without updating the app and will it get accepted?
  3. If the above is not possible then Is there a way to recover my app's source code from the google play console or APK files ?
  4. What else can I do to solve this problem?
Harry
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1 Answers1

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Can I update the policy in the console alone without updating the app?

You can simply update the privacy policy URL from the Google Play Console.

You need to mention clearly that you don't collect any personally identifiable data and also mention about other data which may be collected by 3rd party libraries.

Can I just disable the AdMob ads completely without updating the app and will it get accepted?

You can disable ads from Admob's website. But since the Ad SDK is already packed into your app, doing so will not approve your app.

If the above is not possible then Is there a way to recover my app's source code from the google play console or APK files ?

You cannot fully recover the source code. But if you hadn't used proguard to obfuscate the source code, you might be able to get some part of it by decompiling the APK. You can use a tool called JADX to decompile the APK file.

What else can I do to solve this problem?

Apart from updating app without ads and updating privacy policy URL, you can create another similar app from scratch with same package name and signature. But I guess you don't have access to the Keystore, in that case updating privacy policy is your only option.

Nabin Bhandari
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