Forum Discussion
Action Required: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies
Hello everyone,
We recently received a notification from Google Play stating that our private app, which is only deployed within our organization on professional devices with our MDM, is not compliant with their policies.
The message we received is as follows:
Action Required: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies
The funny thing is, we have the same app deployed on another Google Developer account, only the package name is different and this one has not been flagged by Google.
We are puzzled by this as our app is only shared on professional devices within our organization.
We do not distribute it publicly and we never know if we really need to take action when we receive this type of alert.
Has anyone else faced a similar issue?
Why would Google Play randomly flag and potentially remove our app?
Any insights or advice on how to resolve this would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
I'd assume the other version will be picked up at some point also. Private apps only require passing basic checks so I'd wonder if it's mistakingly overstepping here. Lizzie what say you?
Thanks for sharing this. I'll add this to my list of many reasons why I don't trust or recommend using Managed Play for installing apps on company owned assets. It doesn't make sense to me that a company that owns both the mobile devices and the software being installed on those devices has to get permission from Google before being allowed to install that app on their devices.
Android just wants absolute control of their OS😅...
Hey ThomasH,
Thanks for sharing this.
I can understand your surprise here, especially as it is a private app this is referring. It appears that your app has still been checked for user data policy compliance. I can see two arguments to this from a Google Play Protect standpoint and of course yours from the view of this being an internal private app. Either way, I am sorry that this is not working as you expect.
If you haven't already, you can apply for an extension on this app to give you more time to investigate this further. This might have been included in the message you received above, but if not here are some links:
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thread/252529005/appeal-for-app-suspension-due-to-intellectual-property-violation?hl=en
[2] Form to fill out: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/troubleshooter/2993242As mattdermody in particular knows, we have talked quite a bit about GPP here in the community in the past, and I want us to continue to have these conversations here in the community including around private apps. The feedback and any ideas you have are all really useful and I feed them all back to our team.
Going back to you original topic here, I hope you get this sorted and do keep us posted, if you can.
Thanks,
Lizzie
Hello,
Apologize for the late reply, I was at MWC last week. 🤖
We deployed the exact same app with a new build number, and the message has now disappeared. The app is compliant again.
Typically, we have three versions of the same app: one production version and two test versions. The apps are identical, with the only difference being the server URLs. This isn’t the first time one version has been flagged while the others were not.
I think Google handles this in a strange way, and I still don’t understand why our private app is affected by this type of message.
This has happened four times in the past two years, and each time, we’ve had to contact external developers to quickly get a new version. Sometimes, we’ve tried to fix the issue by following the instructions provided by Google, but the flag remains, although the app has not been removed. Each time, we’ve lost a lot of time for no reason.
I hope this is the last time we encounter this type of issue.
