In 2024 Google claims that it blocked just over 2.3 million potentially risky Android apps from the Play Store mostly due to policy violations that would make them dangerous for Android users.
In a blog post, the Google Security team also reported that it banned 158,000 developer accounts who attempted to publish harmful apps, generally ones that were probably malware or spyware.
It's slightly more blocked apps than in 2023, when Google reported blocking 2.8 million apps, but nearly double the number of developers with 333,000 banned at that time.
According to Google, the increase in blocked apps is due to new "AI-powered threat detection." Reportedly, AI was used in assisting human reviews in 92% of the violating cases to identify malware and spyware.
"Today, over 92% of our human reviews for harmful apps are AI-assisted, allowing us to take quicker and more accurate action to help prevent harmful apps from becoming available on Google Play," the post reads.
Beyond banning or rejecting apps and developers, Google also said that it prevented 1.3 million existing apps from getting excessive permissions which could have given devs of those apps access to more sensitive user data.
Google reminds and we agree, that on our end, people need to be vigilant about the apps that are on their devices. "Only trust reputable publishers, keep the number of installed apps at the minimum necessary, scrutinize and revoke risky app permissions," it recommends.
Part of what might have improved Google's detection of malicious apps last year were some major upgrades to its free antivirus app Play Protect throughout 2024. The app is preinstalled on all of the best Android phones and scans both existing apps and any new ones you download (or even sideload) for malware. Likewise, in late October, Google gave Android phones a big security upgrade that gave users more control over what photos and videos apps were able to access.
Google claims Play Protect scanned over 200 billion apps daily and "performs real-time scanning at the code-level on novel apps."
The post also details how app developers were given tools to secure apps from malicious SDKs (software development kits) and abuse.
It sounds robust and likely protects from more intrusions than we actually see. That said, there were plenty of security flaws and trojans that got through last year. So, as users, we need to be wary too when it comes to downloading and installing new apps.
We would add that you should also scrutinize the permissions apps request and reject them when possible. Also, read reviews in the Play Store. While they can be filled with bots and fake reviews, bad apps tend to reveal themselves as more negative reviews get posted.
