FairEmail Developer Calls It Quits After Google Falsely Flags App As Spyware

'"The developer of the open source email client FairEmail pulled all of his applications from Google Play and announced that he would stop development," reports gHacks. The announcement comes shortly after the developer received an email from Google stating that they believed the app was spyware. From the report: FairEmail was a popular email client for Google's Android operating system that was free to use. It was privacy-friendly, had no limitations in regards to email accounts that users could set up in the app, supported unified inbox, conversation threading, two-way synchronizing, support for OpenPGP, and a lot more. Marcel Bokhorst, the developer of the application, announced major changes to the project yesterday on XDA Developers. Earlier that week, Bokhorst received a policy violation email from Google stating that Google believed that the FairEmail application was spyware. The full statement has not been published, but Bokhorst believes that Google might have misinterpreted the use of favicons in the app. He resubmitted a new version of the application that had the use of favicons removed. The appeal he received as a response "resulted in a standard answer". While the content of the answer is unclear, it appears to have been a generic answer that Google Play Store developers have been frustrated with for a long time. Bokhorst decided to pull the application and all of his other applications from the Google Play Store. The apps won't be maintained and supported anymore according to the info. Other factors played a role in Bokhorst's decision, including the discrepancy between answering thousands of support questions per month and the application's revenue, and the inability to do something against unfair reviews in the Google Play Store. He considered keeping the applications on GitHub, but this would result in an 98% loss of audience. Google also recently forced Total Commander's developer to remove the ability to install APKs from the File Manager. If you're looking for an alternative email client, gHacks recommends the open-source app K-9 Mail.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/05/19/2033249 Oh no, I just switched from K-9 to FairEmail a couple of months ago, as my K-9 was getting extremely slow with syncing mails... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

On 20/5/22 11:40, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'"The developer of the open source email client FairEmail pulled all of his applications from Google Play and announced that he would stop development," reports gHacks.
That's sad news. I use FairEmail, and made a donation last year. Looking for recommendations for the next best open source (preferably installed from F-Droid) mail client for my Android phone. Must support IMAP and notifications for multiple folders (not just the Inbox). -- Simon

On 20/5/22 11:40, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'"The developer of the open source email client FairEmail pulled all of his applications from Google Play and announced that he would stop development," reports gHacks.
That's sad news. I use FairEmail, and made a donation last year. Looking for recommendations for the next best open source (preferably installed from F-Droid) mail client for my Android phone. Must support IMAP and notifications for multiple folders (not just the Inbox).
I've only ever come across K-9. SimpleEmail (an old FairEmail fork) tended to crash: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.dystopia.email/ Not sure whether someone else will pick up the pieces... I guess, getting an email client right takes a lot of effort and is just too old-school for there to be more options out there... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

On 20/5/22 11:40, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'"The developer of the open source email client FairEmail pulled all of his applications from Google Play and announced that he would stop development," reports gHacks.
That's sad news. I use FairEmail, and made a donation last year. Looking for recommendations for the next best open source (preferably installed from F-Droid) mail client for my Android phone. Must support IMAP and notifications for multiple folders (not just the Inbox).
I've only ever come across K-9.
SimpleEmail (an old FairEmail fork) tended to crash: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.dystopia.email/
Not sure whether someone else will pick up the pieces...
Good news everyone, Fairmail is back! https://faircode.eu/faq.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
participants (2)
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Peter Reutemann
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Simon Green