Google Barred More Than 2 Million Policy-Violating Apps From Official Play Store Last Year

Collaborating with SDK providers, Google enhanced privacy measures for over 31 SDKs, benefiting more than 790,000 apps, by limiting sensitive data access and sharing.

Earlier in 2023, Google took significant measures to uphold security and privacy standards on its official Play Store platform. The tech giant revealed that it thwarted 2.28 million policy-violating apps from the Play Store, ensuring users' safety and integrity of the ecosystem. Additionally, the search engine giant cracked down on 333,000 accounts found in violation of policies, addressing issues like confirmed malware and severe breaches created by criminal elements and fraud rings.

Moreover, the tech giant took proactive steps to ensure the proper use of sensitive permissions in nearly 200,000 app submissions. This included scrutinising background location and SMS access to safeguard user privacy. Collaborating with SDK providers, Google enhanced privacy measures for over 31 SDKs, benefiting more than 790,000 apps, by limiting sensitive data access and sharing.

"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 over 790,000 apps," Google wrote in its security-focused blog post.

In response to the growing threat landscape, Google bolstered Google Play Protect's security capabilities, introducing real-time scanning at the code level to combat emerging malicious apps. This initiative aimed to protect users who install apps from sources outside the Play Store. Leveraging security protections and machine learning (ML) algorithms, Google scrutinises thousands of signals and app behaviors to detect and mitigate potential risks.

As a result of these efforts, Google detected over 5 million new malicious off-Play apps, fortifying Android users' security globally.

Additionally, to empower users with more control over their personal data, apps facilitating account creation now require to provide an option for initiating account and data deletion from within the app and online, thus, enhancing user privacy and data management capabilities.