this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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Could be, but that could also just be done locally. Like your phone checking the apps you have installed and seeing if the same ones are on the play store. Having an install limit for an app - assuming that means that the app can only be installed some total number of times globally (a local install limit wouldn't make any sense I think) - necessarily implies that when you install an app through an APK, it has to tell Google that you installed that app so it can track how many people have installed it and not approve installation of the app if it's over whatever the limit is.
If your phone is checking for that information, it's a safe bet it's reporting it back to Google.
Probably. But that might be under the umbrella of optional usage statistics/reporting that you can opt out of. Since this new tracking would be "necessary" for their "security" feature to work, there's no chance that it could be avoided.