Are play store apps fingerprinted with who downloaded them?

Lemonhead

As in apps pushed from owner to another profile (or apks copied and side loaded from another phone) marked with who downloaded them from play store? I was reading about people using the owner profile to log into play store with a google account only used for this purpose and push apps to other profiles. That's a lot of effort I'd like to understand before doing it. If it's not fingerprinted then you don't need a special account right? But if it is fingerprinted and you push it to another profile why bother pushing it?

DeletedUser495

Lemonhead any app can create their own set of unique identifiers that it can upload to the infrastructire it operates on but the apps that are installed in their own separate sandboxes (user profiles) can't see, communicate and potentially correlate data with them.

Fay_Wilmont

No, that is an Apple ecosystem-exclusive feature as far as I know.

gdp

Fay_Wilmont

That is helpful to hear, thank you. I have been wanting to purchase an app to install on my main profile, but resisted doing so due to uncertainty of compromising privacy. Given this, am to understand that we would be "safe" to log in and purchase an app from the Play Store using a separate profile, then push it to our main profile ?

Oggyo

gdp to log in and purchase an app from the Play Store using a separate profile, then push it to our main profile

Please note:

You can't (currently) push apps from a secondary (user or private) profile to the main (owner) profile.
If the purchased app relies on the Play Store to verify its license or paid status, then the transferred app will not detect the Play Store payment and will remain with unlicensed/unpaid status in the destination profile.

Fay_Wilmont

gdp I am not intimately familiar with how this works, but as far as I know the installation files of apps bought from the Play Store are generic. 10 years ago this often got you a redistributable installation package that worked without a Google account, but these days I think most premium apps check with Google servers if your Google account has actually purchased them and will not work if that is not the case (i.e. they won't work in a profile without signed-in Google Play Services).

gdp

Oggyo
Too bad, but I understand why apps would be designed that way. The app of particular interest to me is the VoIP and messaging app from Acrobits called Groundwire. It is highly reviewed, and there doesn't seem to any comparable alternative. I've tried several and would have no hesitation to purchase it if it was not bound to Google.