How Google made Android smartphones ‘safer’ in 2023
Google has announced that it rejected 2.28 million apps from being published on the Play Store in 2023 – up from 1.43 million apps that were banned from the app store in 2022. The company also said that it banned 333,000 potentially malicious developer accounts.
In an annual report, Google said that the improvements and new measures it took to keep Google Play’s users safe as the threat landscape evolved made publishing malicious apps harder in 2023.
The company added the apps have been stopped from being published on Google Play for violating its policies. The accounts have been banned for “violations like confirmed malware and repeated severe policy violations.”
“Additionally, almost 200K app submissions were rejected or remediated to ensure proper use of sensitive permissions such as background location or SMS access. To help safeguard user privacy at scale, we partnered with SDK providers to limit sensitive data access and sharing, enhancing the privacy posture for over 31 SDKs impacting 790K+ apps,” the company said in a blog post.
Google partners with Microsoft, Meta for Android Ecosystem security
Google announced that it partnered with Microsoft and Meta as steering committee members in the newly restructured App Defense Alliance (ADA) to support industry-wide adoption of best security practices and guidelines for apps, as well as countermeasures against emerging security risks.
Last year, the company enhanced Google Play Protect’s security capabilities by launching real-time scanning at the code-level to combat novel malicious apps.
This capability is specifically aimed at protecting Android devices from malicious apps that are downloaded from outside the Google Play Store.
“This new capability has already detected over 5 million new, malicious off-Play apps, which helps protect Android users worldwide,” Google claimed.
In an annual report, Google said that the improvements and new measures it took to keep Google Play’s users safe as the threat landscape evolved made publishing malicious apps harder in 2023.
The company added the apps have been stopped from being published on Google Play for violating its policies. The accounts have been banned for “violations like confirmed malware and repeated severe policy violations.”
“Additionally, almost 200K app submissions were rejected or remediated to ensure proper use of sensitive permissions such as background location or SMS access. To help safeguard user privacy at scale, we partnered with SDK providers to limit sensitive data access and sharing, enhancing the privacy posture for over 31 SDKs impacting 790K+ apps,” the company said in a blog post.
Google partners with Microsoft, Meta for Android Ecosystem security
Google announced that it partnered with Microsoft and Meta as steering committee members in the newly restructured App Defense Alliance (ADA) to support industry-wide adoption of best security practices and guidelines for apps, as well as countermeasures against emerging security risks.
Last year, the company enhanced Google Play Protect’s security capabilities by launching real-time scanning at the code-level to combat novel malicious apps.
This capability is specifically aimed at protecting Android devices from malicious apps that are downloaded from outside the Google Play Store.
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“This new capability has already detected over 5 million new, malicious off-Play apps, which helps protect Android users worldwide,” Google claimed.
