Google has blocked more than 2 million apps that violate the rules in the Play Store

Earlier, in 2023, Google took significant measures to comply with security and privacy standards on its official Play Store platform. The tech giant said it has blocked 2.28 million rule-breaking apps from the Play Store, ensuring user safety and ecosystem integrity. In addition, the search giant has taken action against 333,000 accounts found to be in violation of the rules, addressing issues such as confirmed malware and serious violations created by criminal elements and fraudulent groups.

Moreover, the tech giant has taken proactive steps to ensure the proper use of confidential permissions in almost 200,000 submitted applications. This included careful background location verification and SMS access to protect user privacy. Working with SDK vendors, Google has strengthened privacy measures for more than 31 SDKs, which has benefited more than 790,000 applications by limiting access to and sharing of sensitive data.

“To help protect user privacy on a large scale, we partnered with SDK vendors to restrict access to and sharing of sensitive data, improving the privacy of more than 31 SDKs affecting more than 790,000 applications,” Google wrote in its security blog.

In response to the growing range of threats, Google has expanded the security capabilities of Google Play Protect by implementing real-time scanning at the code level to combat emerging malicious applications. This initiative is aimed at protecting users who install apps from sources outside the Play Store. Using security tools and machine learning (ML) algorithms, Google carefully analyzes thousands of signals and application behavior to detect and mitigate potential risks.

As a result of these efforts, Google has discovered more than 5 million new malicious apps outside of Play, which has improved the security of Android users worldwide.

In addition, to give users more control over their personal data, applications that facilitate account creation must now provide the ability to initiate account creation and delete data from the application and online, which increases user privacy and data management capabilities.

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