A WebView issue related to Chrome 79 is impacting third-party Android apps and leading to user data loss in some cases.
Chrome 79 rolled out earlier this week and brought improved security enhancements to better protect users’ passwords and data. The latest update seems to have impacted WebView.
A number of developers rely on WebView, which is a system component powered by Chrome that allows Android apps to display web content and is updated through the Play Store.
Several Android developers reported that their apps lost data after they updated to version 79 of WebView. They took their issue to the Chromium bug tracker forum and have reported the problem as a “catastrophe” and a “major issue.”
This type of problem is significant for developers because users may potentially blame them for an issue that is entirely out of their hands and not their fault.
Google responded to the problem by halting the release of the update. However 50 percent of users had already updated to version 79. The tech giant has marked the issue as a high priority problem, and says it is working on a solution that will minimize the data loss. Google plans to release a patch in 5-7 days.
So far it seems that no notable Android apps have been impacted.
Source: 9to5Google
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