I was wondering cant we just scrape Play Store and distribute the apks on a different website? most apks has checksums so we will know nobody has changes the apk
There are a bunch of sites like apkmirror etc. that do that but eventually the large ones started enshittifying their service. On apkmirror for example you used to be able to just download the apk’s, now they’ve invented a special “format” that can only be installed through their app. Needless to say that was the end of that, I’m not keen on giving install capability to any more apps than I absolutely have to. (Zero is the ideal answer in case you’re wondering, but in practice it’s usually one, the system file manager. Any other app can download apk’s to /Downloads or go fuck itself.)
I was wondering cant we just scrape Play Store and distribute the apks on a different website? most apks has checksums so we will know nobody has changes the apk
That’s insecure
It is if you use cryptography or cryptographically secure hashing.
There are a bunch of sites like apkmirror etc. that do that but eventually the large ones started enshittifying their service. On apkmirror for example you used to be able to just download the apk’s, now they’ve invented a special “format” that can only be installed through their app. Needless to say that was the end of that, I’m not keen on giving install capability to any more apps than I absolutely have to. (Zero is the ideal answer in case you’re wondering, but in practice it’s usually one, the system file manager. Any other app can download apk’s to /Downloads or go fuck itself.)