Why Did Samsung Take Control of My Banking App? Inside Android’s ‘Clobbering’ Dilemma

Paresh Dave writing for WIRED

The Galaxy Store’s occasional push alerts typically suggest updating Samsung services such as its Clock app or obscure gaming engines. Routine as they are, I tapped the notification, waited for the store to load, and reflexively hit “Update all.” Only after the updates started installing did I notice that the Bank of America app was on the list.

…

My scare with Bank of America was my introduction to Android’s “clobbering” problem, which Google warns could grow worse under a US court order expected in the coming weeks.

I had no idea this was a thing.

Apparently, aside from being an attack vector, updates from other stores can break things like in-app purchases. So if an update is pushed from a store other than the one you bought the app from, you could loose any purchases you made within the app. Additionally, the new app store would now take over commissions for anything bought within the app.

The whole idea of this just seems bad to me.