Google kept more than a million dangerous apps off the Play Store last year
As smartphones become the primary device for millions of users — not to mention a hub of credit cards, IDs, bank accounts, and more — keeping everything secure and locked down is more important than ever. Google continues to focus on mobile privacy and security, both with its upcomingAndroid 13update and on the Play Store, where millions of apps are downloaded every day.
In anew blog post, the company outlines exactly how much progress has been made throughout last year, and some of its numbers are pretty impressive. Through improved review processes — both manual and automatic — Google blocked more than a million policy-violating apps from ever getting published on the Play Store in 2021, with 190,000 developer accounts banned for malicious behavior. It hasn’t come without some controversy — especially withsome genuine accountsgetting caught in the machine learning crossfire.
Changes to Google’s platform policies have resulted in 98 percent of apps migrating to Android 11 or higher featuring reduced access to both APIs and user data. To some, this factor might seem like a drawback — after all,certain apps have been rendered uselessby these new privacy protections. Still, from a safety perspective, it’s a noticeable improvement. Meanwhile, the company also blocked Advertising ID content from being collected in apps and games designed for children, while also allowing any user to delete their Advertising ID information entirely from any app.
Google also drew attention to its work on Pixel phones, including the Security Core found in its Tensor chipset, and the Security hub introduced in Android 12. With new hardware coming down the line later this year — and an upgrade to Android focused explicitly on boosting security — these numbers will only improve from here on out.
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