Google said it blocked over 2.36 million policy-violating Android apps from being published to the Google Play app marketplace in 2024 and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish such harmful apps. The tech giant also noted it prevented 1.3 million apps from getting excessive or unnecessary access to sensitive user data during the time period by working with third-party app developers. Furthermore, Google Play Protect, a security feature that's enabled by default on Android devices to flag novel threats, identified 13 million new malicious apps from outside of the official app store. "As a result of partnering closely with developers, over 91% of app installs on the Google Play Store now use the latest protections of Android 13 or newer," Bethel Otuteye and Khawaja Shams from the Android Security and Privacy Team, and Ron Aquino from Google Play Trust and Safety said. In comparison, the company blocked 1.43 million and 2.28 million risky apps from being published to the Play Store in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Google also said the developers' use of the Play Integrity API – which allows them to check if their apps have been maliciously modified or are running in potentially compromised environments – has seen a 80% lower usage of their apps from unverified and untrusted sources on average. In addition, the company's efforts to automatically block sideloading of potentially unsafe apps in markets like Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Kenya,…Read More