Google Policy Issue - Issue found: APK REQUIRES PROMINENT DISCLOSURE - Upload of user's installed application information

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1

Google sent me the following e-mail on September 14:

Issue found: APK REQUIRES PROMINENT DISCLOSURE

Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies. Your app is not compliant with the User Data policy. Your app is uploading users’ Installed Application information without a prominent disclosure. Your app may face additional enforcement actions, if you do not resolve this issue by September 20, 2025.

As per Google Play’s User Data policy, in cases where your app’s access, collection, use, or sharing of personal and sensitive user data may not be within the reasonable expectation of the user of the product or feature in question, you must provide an in-app disclosure of your data access, collection, use, and sharing and seek affirmative user consent.

Your use case requires a Prominent Disclosure in accordance with this policy.

I do not send any “…users’ Installed Application information…” out of my app and the only 3rd party SDK is LevelPlay SDK 8.11.1 (migrated to it a few weeks ago).

Tried to fix it by hardcoding LevelPlay.setConsent(false) and LevelPlay.setMetaData("do_not_sell","true"), and sending a new app version to Google Play Store. But it was rejected with the same policy violation issue.

Can please someone have a look into this issue and help me? How can we disable the upload of users’ Installed Application information in the Level play SDK?

2

I also got hit with APK REQUIRES PROMINENT DISCLOSURE on “Installed Application information” out of nowhere 4 days ago on September 14th, having made no changes or updates to my game since August 6th.

I’m running version 8.10.0 of Ads Mediation package.

Is there not anything we can do to disable the collection of this information?

3

To prevent my app from being removed from the Google Play Store within 7 days, I quickly implemented an alert dialog with the criteria mentioned in the Google policy email (“Prominent Disclosure”).

If the user is clicking on “Decline”, I set LevelPlay.setConsent(false) and LevelPlay.setMetaData("do_not_sell","true"). In case the user is clicking on “Agree”, I set the flags to the opposite values. In addition, I had to set a “Yes” in the data privacy questionnaire concerning “App Activity” / “App collects data on installed apps”. Now, the policy issue is luckily resolved.

But I’ve still some doubts:

  • According to the ironSource documentation, the SDK does not collect data on installed apps. It’s defined as “No” as one can see here or here.
  • Nonetheless, I was forced by Google to set this parameter to “Yes” in the data safety questionnaire.
  • Is the above-mentioned flag really disabling the SDK from sending this data?
  • Is the overall issue maybe a false-positive?

Would be great if someone could clarify / give some detailed advice.

4

@Metalel , how did you solve the issue on your side?

5

Hi @pa_frei and @Metalel , thanks for raising this. Nevo from LevelPlay here.

Can you please share your app bundle? We can try investigating it on our end. Also, did Google flag this issue as coming from the LevelPlay SDK, or could it be from some other 3rd-party SDK in your app?

6

Hi @n3vos , many thanks for looking into this issue.

In my case, the issues started when I migrated from the former ironSource SDK to Level Play SDK.

I do not use any other 3rd party SDK in my app except Level Play SDK.

My app link is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.patrickfrei.phonetinfo.free

Kind regards,
Patrick

7

Thanks.

Have you looked at this page?

Specifically, setting:

LevelPlay.setMetaData("is_deviceid_optout","true");
LevelPlay.setMetaData("Google_Family_Self_Certified_SDKS","true");

Make sure to set these metadata flags before initializing LevelPlay.

8

Hi, I’m also having the same problem in my games that use Level Play SDK.

@n3vos Those specific settings are for Apps that participate in Google Play’s Designed for Families program, are listed in Google Play’s Family section, or include children as one of the target audiences, which is not my case atleast.

Things I already tried:

  1. Manifest Verified: I have confirmed that the QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission is not present in my game’s final merged manifest.
  2. Code Analyzed: I have searched my app’s compiled code (DEX files) using Android Studio’s APK Analyzer and found no direct calls to methods like getInstalledPackages or getInstalledApplications.
  3. SDKs Updated: LevePlay have been updated to their latest versions.

This might be a false positive incorrectly triggered by Google. I sent an Appeal to Google already to see if I can get a more specific reason of what’s causing the problem.

They give us a very short deadline, so I’ll be using @pa_frei quick solution to see if they approve it and prevent my games from being removed.

9

Hi @n3vos , these flags are not applicable to my app as it’s not part of the Google Play Designed for Families program. It’s also not listed in Google Play’s Family section and also doesn’t include children as one of the target audiences.

10

@n3vos, in addition, I’ve decompiled my app’s compile code and found a call to getInstalledApplications(0) in the ironSource code (checked with SDK 8.11.0, 8.11.1 & 9.0.0). This code retrieves all installed applications:

screenshot
screenshot778×145 15.1 KB

Maybe, this is the reason why Google is sending us these policy violation messages?

Some additional details that might help you:

  1. This was the former ironSource implementation in my app, i.e. ironSource SDK plus mediation with Unity and Facebook (never had issues with it, even with older versions):
    ‘com.ironsource.sdk:mediationsdk:8.8.0’
    ‘com.ironsource.adapters:unityadsadapter:4.3.53’
    ‘com.unity3d.ads:unity-ads:4.14.1’
    ‘com.ironsource.adapters:facebookadapter:4.3.49’
    ‘com.facebook.android:audience-network-sdk:6.19.0’

  2. As soon as I’ve migrated to LevelPlay with below implementation, the issues started (LevelPlay SDK plus mediation with Unity and Facebook):
    ‘com.unity3d.ads-mediation:mediation-sdk:8.10.0’
    ‘com.unity3d.ads-mediation:unityads-adapter:4.3.58’
    ‘com.unity3d.ads:unity-ads:4.16.0’
    ‘com.unity3d.ads-mediation:facebook-adapter:4.3.50’
    ‘com.facebook.android:audience-network-sdk:6.20.0’

11

Thanks for the additional information @pa_frei.

Are you able to check if you’re getting the same error with the old Mediation SDK (8.8.0) together with the adapter versions you used in the new implementation (e.g. ‘com.unity3d.ads-mediation:facebook-adapter:4.3.50’ etc)? This will help us rule out some potential sources to the issue.

Also, when using LevelPlay 8.8.0 and decompiling your app, are you able to observe the call to getInstalledApplications(0)?

We’re also investigating internally.

12

In order to check this, I would have to upload my app to Google again and try to get it approved. I think this procedure is quite delicate because they could think that I want to circumvent somehow their checks.

Yes, even in an older version of my decompiled app, I can see the call to getInstalledApplications(0). So, this is either not the root cause or they got more restrictive or it’s definitively a false-positive.

13

@Zepir , could you also solve the issue by using my quick solution?

14

Thank you. We’ll investigate and let you know.

15

Yes, thanks for the quick solution! Currently waiting for some more information about this issue from Unity and Google support team.

16

Has this issue been resolved? I received the same warning from Google Play. My last app update was in July 2025.

17

Any update on this issue? Got similar massage when tried to publish update with LevelPlay integration.

18

I have got the same issues for my own games and the issue is the ironsource library even the latest one keeps the query for:

String[] packagesForUid = context.getPackageManager().getPackagesForUid(iMyUid);

And

@Override // com.ironsource.InterfaceC0494y7
    public List<ApplicationInfo> H(Context context) {
        return context.getPackageManager().getInstalledApplications(0);
    }

Can the team please update and remove those. Or make a version where these aren’t required and requested. Thank you

levelplay = "9.1.0"
unityAds  = "4.16.4"
uaAdapter = "4.3.62"

The current solution i see is to remove the ironSource from your games until the resolution is here. I have been waiting for 4 weeks now for my apps in IronSource to be approved anyway so they aren’t very active on this at all.

It’s clearly a problem and it haven’t been resolved for a lot of time now. In the newer versions of Android this is not even allowed so i am not sure why it’s even here.

I have removed completely from all my applications and games ironSource now and Google have accepted my apps. I have to now appeal on each one as i can see to remove the notification and warning about this issue.

19

I just got this notification as well. I don’t use any third party tracking other than Level Play/Ironsource. I’ve connected these networks LevelPlay core + AdMob + AppLovin + Unity Ads

20

Hi Guys, When can we expect Level Play will resolve this issue. As of now I just replace Level Play with some other mediation.