Blocks submissionGoogle Play

If the app declares itself a monitoring tool, it is parent-child or employer-employee only, with notification, icon and disclosure

What is checked This rule is decided by code from the built app and the listing: android.built.manifest.

Applies to every app

Checked from built, not yet uploaded, on a test track, submitted and in review, published

The rule, in our words

• Malware: No code, including third-party SDKs, that puts the user, their data or the device at risk: no backdoors, billing fraud, elevated-privilege abuse, phishing, ransomware, malicious rooting, spam, spyware, trojans, hostile downloaders, riskware or denial of service. Spyware includes any SDK that sends data off the device in a way the user would not expect or without adequate notice and consent. Stalkerware: an app that collects personal or sensitive data and transmits it to another party for monitoring is allowed only when exclusively designed and marketed for parents monitoring their children or enterprises monitoring employees; it may never track any other person, such as a spouse, even with consent and a persistent notification. Such apps must give prominent disclosure and obtain consent under the User Data policy, carry the IsMonitoringTool manifest flag, never present as a spying or secret-surveillance tool, never hide or cloak tracking, show a persistent notification and a unique icon whenever running, disclose the monitoring in the Play store description, never link to or enable non-compliant functionality (such as an outside APK), and comply with local law.

Okkok never stores the stores' text. Each item above is our paraphrase, and the link is the page it rests on, verified unchanged by fingerprint on every run.

The other store

• Google sets specific monitoring-app conditions and bans tracking any adult other than employees regardless of consent; Apple has no dedicated monitoring-app rule beyond consent and no-covert-profiling. google-stricter
• Google requires a persistent notification, unique icon and manifest flag while running, and forbids tracking any other adult even with consent; Apple restricts who may publish MDM, requires Apple's permission for the capability, and bans any third-party data disclosure. partial

Check your app

pip install git+https://github.com/petresandu-cloud/okkok
okkok audit path/to/app

The report names this rule as google.monitoring-tool-flag and says what to do, who does it, where, and how it knows.