It doesn't make it "tricky", it makes it impossible.

Time to get downvoted to oblivion.

I see a lot of people questioning why Google would do this and the answer is pretty simple.

Google created a tool a long, long time ago which was meant to make sure traffic from a device was "legit". This tool is 100% optional and app developers can use it if they would like. However, the tool was easy to bypass, so over the years Google has been making the tool harder and harder to bypass.

This article is just sharing news that Google is once again making this tool harder to bypass.

So why is Google doing this? They are doing this because they don't want their tool to be bypassable. Their tool is worthless if it can be bypassed.

The tool in question here is the Play Integrity API (previously known as the SafetyNet Attestation API). This is a tool that is offered to app developers that app developers can take advantage of if they want. The selling point of the tool is if you have operation in your app that is critical, you can try to prevent some abuse by verifying that the app is running on a "trusted build of Android" and that the app itself has not been modified from the original. That's all the tool does.

This isn't a new API. This isn't something Google is trying to force app developers to use. No. From Google's point of view, they are just making sure their tool does it's job properly.

As for why companies might choose to use this tool, a big reason is because Android is a huge target for fraud. Apple has locked all their stuff down so it is much harder to commit fraud on iOS (not impossible though). Although Apple offers something similar, there is generally less fraud coming from iOS devices vs Android. It's the double-edged sword of having a more open platform.

Companies are obviously not going to be happy to be the target of fraud so they have to weigh their options. Either they block a small percentage of their users that are possibly legit by implementing Play Integrity API or they risk losing a % of their income to fraud.

Now you can disagree with the tool's job, I'm not trying to argue whether the tool is good or bad. That is extremely subjective, but hopefully this answers why Google is making this change.

So instead of completely using FOSS softwareonly, you just give in to the corps?

This has nothing to do with FOSS, of which plenty exists on iOS

What do people even do in there ?

In France some banks illegally force users to use the banking application to approve online transactions as a security feature.

They could implement OTP as an alternative but they don't because they are lazy.

Which ones? I've been on Boursorama, CA and SG, and they all provide SMS 2FA if you don't want to use the app.

If I don't have Play Integrity spoofed, my iPhone friends get an error when they try to RCS message me. This pretty much breaks communication for me.