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WhatsApp has no motivation to use SafetyNet. For one thing plenty of their users use cheap Chinese phones that aren't actually Google certified (but come with the Play Store anyway) and they know this full well from their analytics.

For another, SafetyNet is used primarily for DRM on streaming services and for banking or other financial apps. Absolutely no messenger uses it that I am aware of (unless you count Snapchat as a "messenger" but that's literally it).

Every FB owned app runs fine on Android devices that fail SafetyNet. No reason to believe that'll change because where's the benefit for FB?

Thanks. Since no company is registered under that address I'd bet there simply is no company and the guy is just a sole trader under the name Six Ace Games. No official registration needed for that, you just have to report the income to HMRC (taxman) and that's it.

> Or does Google associates even if you're logged in into multiple accounts in the same browser?

Of course they do. Fingerprinting browsers is extremely easy.

The only restriction they have for unrooted phones is lack of auto updates, a mild inconvenience at worst. You also have to hit "install" on a little pop up window when you install something. That's it.

Most regular users are capable of hitting an update notification manually.

> Furthermore, no company would be asinine enough to allow bots, AI, or ML make decisions without a way to undo those changes.

Sadly this is actually the norm across all these big tech platforms these days. Algorithm bans an account, humans might give it a look later if a big enough fuss is kicked up about it, else there is no appeals.

Of course there is a button a human can press to undo these things, but the trouble is getting a human to bother looking at it in the first place.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Discord all do the same thing.

If you have a rooted phone you probably have Magisk, it's virtually the universal go to rooting app and the easiest method of rooting. You can even still get OTA's if your phone uses the A/B update system like basically every modern Android phone.

It is managed through a simple UI that automates most of this stuff for you, and it also has a library of third party extensions you can install as easy as apps from the Play Store that apply various system mods including the Google Pay hack.

Anyone who cannot work out how to use Magisk is unlikely to have a rooted phone in the first place. As I said, Magisk is the easiest and most common rooting method used these days because it is the most simple and convenient.

You can run a script to do it for you, you don't even have to know what SQLite is, you just need to go on xda and run the script that makes Google Pay work.

Although I would argue that these concerns only apply to regular users who wouldn't bother rooting their phones in the first place. Most people who root their phones are willing to run scripts and know they need to be a bit hacky to make stuff work.

Users who are not willing to take that view shouldn't be rooting.

If your product is B2B SaaS do you really need to put ads inside your app?

It genuinely does wonders for mental health to disable notifications for social media apps. Definitely agree there.

> No company information in the UK company database for either 6ace or sixace, despite a claimed address of "61,hallwicks road,Luton,Bedfordshire,London-LU2 9BG".

To be fair it is common for a UK company to have a generic name and for various activities run under it to trade under different names.

Usually however when the company is legitimate the footer of the website will say "Brand Name is a trading name for Actual Company Name Limited" where the company name will be registered at Companies House.

Not the case here, cannot see any info on the actual company, couldn't actually find a mention of that address anywhere on the site either where did you get it from?

That's a residential address for a random house in Luton. Not uncommon for a small company to be registered to a residential property, but the address doesn't seem to be in Companies House records.

Anyway I do agree this is sending off all sorts of red flags for me too, I think the post is telling a very one sided story and Google in this specific case has legitimate reason to ban that dodgy developer account.

They've gained free SEO, traffic, and publicity from this HN thread alone.