Google banning, blocking or deleting accounts using Aurora Store? Here's the official word

The Aurora Store is a popular and open-source client app for Google Play Store that has been designed by keeping privacy in mind.

The app store makes it easy for one to download and install apps on their phones without installing any privacy-invasive services or apps by Google. However, recently, users have been facing some issues.

According to the latest reports (1,2,3,4,5,6), Google is supposedly banning, blocking, or deleting accounts of those who use the Aurora Store.

Although one can login to the store with their anonymous account, they cannot download any paid applications. Due to this, they have to use a Google account to sign in and download such apps.

Users complain that all of their accounts that are registered or used with the store are being banned or blocked by Google. And in the worst case scenario, the accounts are being permanently deleted.

One of those affected says that their secondary Google account got suspended after downloading three apps, and that too just within 2 hours of registration on the Aurora Store.

Another user also alleges that their account recently got disabled for ‘unusual activity’. In this regard, some say that a newly created account is more likely to be under scrutiny for unusual or suspicious services.

Redditors are suggesting that users should not make use of their main Google account for registering on the Aurora Store.

It has also been advised that one uses disposable phone numbers to create and use new Google accounts.

Just wanted to let you know that my disposable google account has just been deactivated. I created it two hours ago and used it to log into Aurora. Using this account, I downloaded three apps. About two hours later, I received a message that the account was disabled.
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Don’t think it was due to Aurora itself but rather due to the recent crackdown of Google deleting inactive accounts.
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Some are now even thinking of switching to alternative services like Aptoide or F-Droid to avoid getting banned either temporarily or permanently.

A user claims that anonymous account logins can be re-enabled when the target number of 100 accounts is reached.

According to one of the officials, accounts are just being blocked by Google temporarily. Apparently, this is happening as the workload on each account has increased, resulting in a token rate-limit.

So, the persistent limiting has caused the accounts to be temporarily blocked. It has also been mentioned that there is a 2-day cooldown for the same and that more accounts are being added to better distribute the load.

That said, we’ll keep an eye on this topic and update this article to reflect noteworthy information.

Note: There are more such stories in our dedicated Google section, so make sure that you check them out as well.

Featured image source: Aurora Store

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