Google Play Protect flagging app as harmful

[coderkei]

Describe the bug Google play protect is flagging this app as harmful

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install or update the app directly from github releases with play protect enabled.
2. The message will appear. This will also show as a notification.

Expected behavior For this to not occur, presumably its a false positive but still a concern

Screenshots

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: N/A
• Browser N/A
• Version N/A

Smartphone (please complete the following information):

• Device: Samsung Galaxy S21
• OS: Android 14
• App Version: 1.3.3

Additional context Any idea why its being flagged? I assume its a false positive. Not sure if the F-Droid build is affected as this was with the github release build.

[ismartcoding]

The issue was resolved after rebuilding the APK. (root cause is still unknown)

Possible reason:

Obfuscation: Heavy obfuscation of the code can sometimes trigger Play Protect, as it might be seen as an attempt to hide malicious behavior.

[ismartcoding]

I believe Google Play Protect utilizes results from multiple file scanning platforms. It's absurd that some file scanning platforms label apps as malicious based solely on the permissions they request.

[torbato]

So if we are using the GitHub release version we can just ignore the flagging? I tried uninstalling and reinstalling multiple times but the bug is still present. I would like to be able to use the latest version since the one packaged for f-droid is older. I hope Google will fix their problems.

[ismartcoding]

Version 1.3.4 is identical to 1.3.3; the only change made was an increase in version number to test Google Protect.