Google Reports Blocking Over 2.2 Million Malicious Apps on the Play Store
In late April 2024, Google announced that enhancements to its security processes prevented 2.28 million privacy-violating apps from being published on its Google Play store in 2023.
The company attributed this success to investments in improved security features, updated policies, advanced machine learning, enhanced application review processes, and strengthened developer onboarding. These efforts were aimed at combating malicious Android apps and actors attempting to infiltrate the app store.
Google's enhanced safeguards enabled the identification of bad actors and fraud rings more effectively, resulting in the banning of 333,000 bad accounts from Google Play due to malware distribution and severe policy violations.
In the past year, Google either rejected or requested remediation for nearly 200,000 application submissions that requested sensitive permissions.
To enhance user privacy, Google collaborated with SDK providers to minimize access to and sharing of sensitive data, affecting over 30 SDKs and more than 790,000 applications.
Google expanded the Google Play SDK Index, which covers commercial software development kits on Google Play, to include toolkits used in almost 6 million Android applications.
Google Joins Forces With Microsoft and Meta to Fight Bad Apps
Additionally, Google is partnering with Microsoft and Meta as part of the restructured App Defense Alliance (ADA) to promote the adoption of app security best practices and guidelines, and protect against emerging threats.
In line with Google's commitment to improving user safety, VPN applications that undergo a security review through ADA's Mobile App Security Assessment (MASA) will receive specific labels in Google Play to increase visibility.
Furthermore, Google introduced real-time code scanning capability for Google Play Protect in October 2023, which warns users of potentially malicious software when installing applications that have not been scanned before.
Using machine learning algorithms, Google has identified over 5 million malicious applications distributed outside of Google Play. Updated policies regarding developer account creation and tightened testing requirements aim to ensure more high-quality content is published on Google Play.
To enhance user privacy and security, applications allowing account creation must now provide options for account and data deletion from the app and online. Additionally, approximately 1.5 million applications that do not target the latest Android APIs are no longer available to new users who have updated to the latest Android version.
