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Apr 24, 2021, 11:57:15 AM (3 days ago) 

Sequence of events that led to DroidScript's removal from Google Play

31 March - We received notice via email that our Google Publisher/AdMob account has been disabled for 'Invalid traffic'.  This came totally out of the blue for us and we had no idea why Google's system suddenly decided that it didn't like our App after more than 12 months of Ad serving with no issues.  We only have a single Ad banner on our main app screen which we reluctantly added to cover our development and hosting costs.  

Here is the main part of the email from Google:

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[email protected]
31 Mar 2021, 13:52
to me

Hello,

With our advertising programmes we strive to create an online ecosystem that benefits publishers, advertisers and users. For this reason, we sometimes have to take action against accounts that show behaviour towards users or advertisers that may negatively impact how the ecosystem is perceived. In your case, we have detected invalid traffic or activity on your account (Publisher Code: pub-***************) and as a result it has been disabled. Because of this, the ability to serve and monetise through all products which depend on AdSense will also be disabled (for example, AdMob and YouTube).

We understand that you may want to know more about the issues that we’ve detected. Because this information could be used to circumvent our proprietary detection system, we’re unable to provide our publishers with information about specific account activity.

Ad Exchange account disabled for invalid traffic

Once you’ve made changes to your site(s), app(s) or channel(s) to comply with our programme policies and terms of service, you can reach out to us using our appeal process. Please make sure that you provide a complete analysis of your traffic or other reasons that may have led to invalid activity in your appeal.
...
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Ad Fraud! What? This can't be right, we thought.

In their email Google gives you the opportunity to appeal, but they ask you for a "complete analysis of your traffic or other reasons that may have led to invalid activity in your appeal".  Well, we had no idea what could have caused this and couldn't think of anything we could do in our App to fix this issue since Google provides so little information to go on.  All Google told us is we had 'invalid traffic' with no further information and worse still, a statement saying they are not even willing to give us anymore information! 

So we looked up Google's definition of 'Invalid Traffic' and made our best guess at what might have caused this issue and then submitted our appeal. Our main guess was that one of our users was experimenting with our AdMob ID after extracting it from our APK, but we have no evidence of this and no way of proving it. We thought that we might get the opportunity to change our AdMob ID or get some other suggestion from the Adsense team during the appeal process.

Shockingly, after just 11 minutes, we received the following rejection email, which was probably just an automated response:

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[email protected]
31 Mar 2021, 14:03
to me

Hello,

Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate your continued interest in our programme. However, after taking into consideration the information that you have provided, we have confirmed that we are unable to reinstate your publisher account.

Please note that your account will not receive further payments. You are not eligible for further participation in our publisher programmes, and may not create new accounts.

Thank you for understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google Ad Traffic Quality Team
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Thank you for understanding! You must be kidding, we certainly DO NOT understand how you can treat people like this.  How can they expect people to build organisations or businesses supported by advertising revenue, when they might be subject to this type of summary execution at any moment!

This was a devastating blow for us, particularly as there seemed to be no way to communicate further with Google about this issue.  They had just cut us off, along with 30% of our income stream and there seems to be nothing we can do about it!  We weren't even given the opportunity to have a reasonable conversation with someone in the AdSense team.

Upset, but determined to continue, we decided the best course of action was to remove the AdMob feature from our App completely, (the Ads had Stopped showing in our App anyway, because our AdMob ID was now invalid). Unfortunately we also have to inform our users that we could no longer support AdMob for use in their own apps either, because we can't test it anymore and can't guarantee that Google won't treat them in the same brutal way. So we began to work on a new release of DroidScript with AdMob completely stripped out.

But before we could get a new version ready, we received another, even more devastating blow from Google Play, when we received the following email:-

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Google Play Support <[email protected]>
7 Apr 2021, 00:37
to me

Google Play
Developer update

Hi Developers at droidscript.org, After a recent review, DroidScript - JavaScript Mobile Coding IDE has been removed from Google Play.
Publishing status: Suspended

Your app has been suspended and removed due to a policy violation.
Reasons of violation
APK:206 Ad Fraud
App violates Ad Fraud policy.

...
--------------------------------

This was quickly becoming a nightmare!

This was not just a temporary removal where you get a chance to fix this issue and upload your app again (Like when Google change their developer policies and your app suddenly becomes non-compliant).  No, this was much more serious, Google informed us that we can not re-upload this App under the same package name again, meaning we will lose all or our hard earned user ratings, download statistics and all of our Premium subscribers which we have painstakingly built up over the last 7 years!  Our premium subscribers will in-turn lose access to all of the extra features of DroidScript as their subscriptions have started being automatically cancelled by Google and no one will be able to find our app on the Play Store anymore because our page ranking will be severely affected.  

By this time we started to get emails to our support team and posts on the forum from worried users asking where the DroidScript App had gone, including one from a worried teacher who could no longer find our App on the PlayStore as he needed it to teach his students that day.

This was even worse than losing the Ad revenue... now thousands of our users are being affected too. Luckily there is an appeal mechanism for Google Play and we thought, this time that we might get a more reasonable response than we did for AdMob, as in the past we have managed to at least have a human-human conversation with one of the Google Play support team (after eventually battling through the usual automated responses).

Unfortunately our confidence in them was misplaced... not only did they show no interest in investigating the problem with our AdMob account, Google then decided to accuse DroidScript of being Malware too!  

OMG! We were now starting to feel really persecuted by Google.

Please see the email conversation below that we had with Google Play Support and note their refusal to provide any detailed information which would allow us to actually fix the supposed policy violations. Please note Google's complete lack of understanding regarding the effect this will have on over 100,000 users and our organisation too.

[Note: Our appeal was sent on Wed, 7 Apr, 19:28, it took a full 12 days for them to respond! In the meantime we have lost all of our Ad revenue and our Premium subscribers are having their subscriptions automatically cancelled by Google on their renewal date. We have now had to warn our part-time coders and support staff that we won't have sufficient funds to pay their (already meagre) wages this month and maybe NEVER if this situation continues]

Our conversation with the Google Play Support Team follows:

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[email protected]
Mon, 19 Apr, 19:02
to David

Hi Developer

Thanks for contacting the Google Play team. I've received your appeal and I appreciate your patience while I look into it.

I'll let you know as soon as I have any additional information to share. Please let me know if you have any questions in the meantime.

Regards,
Cindy
The Google Play Team
Please visit the Google Play Developer Policy Center and Google Play's Academy for App Success to learn more about building policy compliant and high quality apps. You can also visit the Android Developers Blog for the latest Android and Google Play news for app and game developers.

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David
19 Apr 2021, 21:37
to Google

Hi Cindy,

It's a relief to finally talk to a real human.  

We are a not-for-profit organization and we rely on our Admob and Subscription income to keep the lights on and our servers running.  This sudden suspension, with the potential loss of over 7 years worth PlayStore ratings and over 500 premium subscriptions will be a devastating blow to our community.  If we have to start again from scratch it will probably be the final nail in the coffin for us, as we already struggle to make ends meet.

Here is our website if you need more info:  https://droidscript.org/

In order to convince you that we are a legitimate and well intended organization, I also like to point out that that droidscript.org is also a graduate of Cambridge University Judge Business School, social enterprise scheme:

https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/social-innovation/cambridge-social-ventures/our-ventures/droidscript/

We have over 100,000 thousand users, including many teachers and students and I have recently received a number of emails from worried teachers and users asking why our app has gone missing from the PlayStore.

I would appreciate it if you could also look into why our Admob account has been terminated (if you have that ability) because this constituted 30% of our income and its sudden termination with no proper explanation has also badly affected us.  Our appeal to Admob was rejected within a few minutes, which leads me to suspect that a bot was responding rather than a human. Unfortunately, because very little information is given by the Admob system at termination, we don't know why our account was terminated.  We can only guess that it is because a number of users (a [country name] group we believe) have cloned, or attempted to clone our app and this may have triggered some sort of alert in the Admob system.  However, if there turns out to be a problem with our implementation of Admob, then we can just about survive without that part of our app if necessary and we would be willing to remove that functionality.

I sincerely hope you can help restore our app for the sake of our community as soon as possible, this suspension has already cost us many hundreds of dollars so far and we are losing subscribers every day while it is in place.

Yours sincerely
David
(founder droidscript.org)

[Note: I now believe Cindy was probably a bot and this email fell on deaf ears]

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[email protected]
20 Apr 2021, 19:14
to me

Hi Developer,

Thanks for contacting the Google Play team.

Status of app: Suspended from Google Play due to policy violation

I’ve reviewed your appeal request and found that your app DroidScript - JavaScript Mobile Coding IDE, still violates Google Play Policy.

During review, we found that your app violates the Malware policy. We don't allow apps with any code that could put a user, a user’s data, or a device at risk. If your app was developed by a third party, we recommend contacting them to verify that they designed your app to comply with our policies.

You can read through the Malware policy page for more details and examples of common violations.

Your app is not compliant with the Ad Fraud policy. Ad fraud is strictly prohibited. Ad interactions generated for the purpose of tricking an ad network into believing traffic is from authentic user interest is ad fraud, which is a form of invalid traffic. Ads should not be shown in a way that results in inadvertent clicks. Forcing a user to click an ad or submit personal information for advertising purposes before they can fully use an app is prohibited. Ads should not appear after the user has exited the app, or after the user has pressed the back button to exit the app.

Please note that suspensions count as strikes against the good standing of your Google Play Developer account. Egregious or multiple policy violations can result in suspension, as can repeated app rejections or removals.

If your developer credentials are still in good standing with Google Play and if your app allows for it, you can publish a new compliant version of the app by following these steps:

Make the necessary changes to your app to address the issue described above, if possible. Double check that your app complies with all other Developer Program Policies. Additional enforcement could occur if there are further policy violations.
Sign in to your Play Console and upload a new app using a new package name and a new app name.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks for your continued support of Google Play.

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David
20 Apr 2021, 20:25
to Google

Hi,

We still don't believe our app violates either the 'Malware' or the 'Ad Fraud' policy.  Please explain to us exactly how our app violates these policies and we might have a chance of fixing the problems.

Regarding our Ad banner: Our app does not contain code for purposes of 'tricking' ad networks or users. We simply have a single ad banner at the bottom of our main screen.  We don't force users to click that banner.  When no adverts are currently available from the Google Ad network we show our own alternative advert for our Premium subscriptions.  This is by no means 'tricking a user'.

How can we hope to fix any issues if we aren't  informed of which specific part of each policy we are violating?  

Please help us sort out these issues.  There is simply not enough information given here!

Your sincerely
David

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[email protected]
20 Apr 2021, 21:54
to me

Hi Developer,

Thanks again for contacting the Google Play team.

Unfortunately I'm not able to comment on your planned implementation or provide a better answer to your question.

We don't allow apps with any code that could put a user, a user’s data, or a device at risk. If your app was developed by a third party, we recommend contacting them to verify that they designed your app to comply with our policies.

You can read through the Malware policy page for more details and examples of common violations.

Your app is not compliant with the Ad Fraud policy. Ad fraud is strictly prohibited. Ad interactions generated for the purpose of tricking an ad network into believing traffic is from authentic user interest is ad fraud, which is a form of invalid traffic. Ads should not be shown in a way that results in inadvertent clicks. Forcing a user to click an ad or submit personal information for advertising purposes before they can fully use an app is prohibited. Ads should not appear after the user has exited the app, or after the user has pressed the back button to exit the app.

If you have a different question, please let me know.

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David
10:09
to Google

Hi,

Please explain why we have not been given an opportunity to make changes to our app and re-publish with the same package name?  

If we have to re-publish under another name we will have a strike against our account, lose over 7 years of hard work building our good rating and download stats (over 1 million downloads) and over 500 premium subscriptions will get automatically cancelled.  This will be a financial catastrophe for our not-for-profit organisation and those 500 users will lose their Premium features too.  This will also be a devastating blow to our community, many of which are educators and students who use this app in code clubs or at home to learn programming.  This will also generate bad publicity for Google Play as many of our users will undoubtedly be very vocal about this situation on social media.

We strongly believe that we are not in violation of the Google Play policies and the lack of detail regarding our supposed infringements make it almost impossible to come into compliance anyway, so if we re-publish, we are likely to be flagged up again for the same issues. We offered to remove Admob from our app and re-publish it, (even though we don't believe it to be in violation of the rules), but now suddenly we are also being accused of being Malware too and have not been given any proper explanation of why.  

Surely this is a very bad way to treat your developers and can only do harm to the Google Play team's reputation.

Yours sincerely
David
(founder droidscript.org)

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[email protected]
Wed, 21 Apr, 17:08
to me

Hi Developer,

Thanks again for contacting the Google Play Team.

As much as I'd like to help, I’m not able to provide any more detail or a better answer to your question. In our previous email, I made sure to include all the information available to me.

You should be able to find more about your issue here:Developer Policy Center
Thank you for your understanding.

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GAME OVER!  What the hell do we do now?

You, the developer community are our only hope now. Please spread the word and help us in this David vs Goliath situation.  

This poor of treatment of developers can't be allowed to go unnoticed by the wider community.  We are not the first to get this sort of treatment and we won't be the last unless we fight back in the only way we can - by publicly denouncing Google. We must use 'people power' to embarrass them and tarnish their brand just enough to make them change their ways!

Yours sincerely

David

(founder droidscript.org)