Hi everyone, My story begins(at least from what I know) in November 2016 when I first saw a strange thing in my Google Analytics dashboards. The strange thing was that I was having sessions and users from an application version which I have never published on Google Play. After a few investigation I found the cool dimension called "Engagement->App ID" in Google Analytics which allowed me to look at the data from the App ID perspective.
To my surprise I noticed that there were 2 App ID's which were not familiar to me. My next step was to take this id's and search for them on Google Play. With not much effort I found the applications and realized that these 2 developers have copied/stole and replicated my application on their account (one of them didn't even took the effort to make new screenshots and description for the application). At that point I have submitted a removal request for both copies and concluded that they copied the application and somehow forgot to replace the Google Analytics code( that was my luck :) ). With the support from Google a few days later both applications were removed from the store(accounts for both developers remained active). Although my problem was solved I remained concerned that my Google Play or Google Admob account might get associated/linked with the accounts of these developers or other developers that will continue to try to steal and replicate my applications. Unfortunately this morning my concerns became quite real when I got an email from Admob stating that ad serving was disabled for my application. When I got to read the email in detail I quickly noticed that the app id for which the ads were disabled is not mine, but instead the app id of another developer that stole and replicated my application. The conclusion was that this developer not only forgot to change the Google Analytics code but actually forgot to also change the Admob app id. The ad serving for that application was disabled because of his Google Play account termination due to some policy violations. My fear now is that also my Google Play account might get associated with this kind of developers considering that the accounts of the first 2 developers that I have mentioned are still active and they still publish applications that are stolen from other developers. My actions so far: Wrote emails to both Admob and Google Play. At this point I am waiting for their response. With that being said, I was wondering if anyone else was in a situation similar to this, or if anyone has any suggestion on what I should do next. Any ideas are well appreciated. Sorry for the long post but I considered that some other developers might learn something from my experience, even how to use Google Analytics for theft prevention(unfortunately, the ones that are stealing the work of others will also see this post) :). Best regards, Alin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/android-developers. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/android-developers/597bfb97-1b92-4227-bce6-9d98d44ba011%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
