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This is really one of those news that just seems to be bought by Android's competitors.

The user has to install a pirated APK. Also Play store is SSL secured. Just use common sense.

Not everybody can download from the Play Store because of ridiculous device and country restrictions. If you are from the US or Europe, you're mostly fine but from other countries you often have to download the APKs from non-official websites and I guess that's where there could be a problem.

Why? I installed most of my apps from Play Store, if some apps have country restriction, it's because they have a good reason to do so (range of service or support)

Where I live, many apps are not available and it's not clear at all why. Usually I just end up searching for the apk, install it and it works just fine.

It's worth noting that (for a while), the Play Store / Play Services has offered to verify even sideloaded apps. I notice this regularly when I install a new build of Firefox Aurora. It's never rejected an update, but I believe it is looking for exactly this sort of thing. So as long as you have Google Play Services in any form, you should be covered.

The more interesting question is when / how will Amazon (and other reputable app stores) deal with the issue.

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