Last week, we took immediate action to protect users from a phishing attack that attempted to abuse the OAuth authorization infrastructure.
Today, we’re supplementing those efforts to help prevent these types of issues in the future. These changes may add some friction and require more time before you are able to publish your web application, so we recommend that you plan your work accordingly.
Updating app identity guidelines
As our Google API user data policy states, apps must not mislead users. For example, app names should be unique to your application and should not copy others'.To further enforce this policy, we are updating our app publishing process, our risk assessment systems, and our user-facing consent page in order to better detect spoofed or misleading application identities. You may see an error message as you’re registering new applications or modifying existing application attributes in the Google API Console, Firebase Console, or Apps Script editor as a result of this change.
New review processes and restrictions on web apps requesting user data
We have also enhanced our risk assessment for new web applications that request user data.Based on this risk assessment, some web applications will require a manual review. Until the review is complete, users will not be able to approve the data permissions, and we will display an error message instead of the permissions consent page. You can request a review during the testing phase in order to open the app to the public. We will try to process those reviews in 3-7 business days. In the future, we will enable review requests during the registration phase as well.
You can continue to use your app for testing purposes before it is approved by logging in with an account registered as an owner/editor of that project in the Google API Console. This will enable you to add additional testers, as well as initiate the review process.
We also recommend developers review our earlier post outlining their responsibilities when requesting access to user data from their applications. Our teams will continue our constant efforts to support a powerful, useful developer ecosystem that keeps users and their data safe.
