Google Blocks 2.36 Million Risky Android Apps from Play Store in 2024, Leveraging AI for Enhanced Security

Google blocked 2.36 million risky Android apps from Play Store in 2024

Google blocked 2.3 million Android app submissions to the Play Store in 2024 due to violations of its policies that made them potentially risky for users. In addition, 158,000 developer accounts were banned for attempting to publish harmful apps like malware and spyware on Android's official app store. In comparison, Google blocked 2,280,000 risky apps in 2023 and 1,500,000 apps in 2022, while the figures for blocked Play developer accounts were 333,000 and 173,000, respectively. The larger number of blocked apps in 2024 is partly attributed to AI assisting human reviews, which was used in 92% of the violating cases. "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," explained Google. "That's enabled us to stop more bad apps than ever from reaching users through the Play Store, protecting users from harmful or malicious apps before they can cause any damage." Apart from rejections and blocks, Google reports that it has also prevented 1.3 million apps from getting excessive permissions that would have granted them unnecessary access to sensitive user data. Google Play Protect, Android's built-in security system, received significant upgrades in 2024 to enhance real-time protection against malicious apps, scams, and fraud, even for apps installed outside the Play Store. The tech giant says Android's default protection suite scanned over 200 billion apps daily, performing live code-level analysis. During 2024, these scans identified over 13 million new malware apps sourced from outside Google Play. App developers were also given new tools to better secure their apps from malicious SDKs and abuse, with the Google Play SDK index expanding greatly last year to add another 80 trusted SDKs. Moreover, increased adoption of the Play Integrity API saw an 80% reduction in abuse from untrusted sources. In comparison, 91% of app installs now use security and privacy protection features available in Android 13 and later. Google's untrusted APK installation blocking system, first launched as a pilot in Singapore in February 2024, has now been expanded to Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its 2024 success is reflected in stopping 36 million installation attempts of 200,000 unique apps from nesting in 10 million Android devices. As Google strengthens Android protections yearly, gaps in security remain, and cybercriminals employ new, more advanced methods to bypass automated scanners. Users must remain vigilant, only trust reputable publishers, keep the number of installed apps at the minimum necessary, scrutinize and revoke risky app permissions, and ensure Play Protect is running at all times.

Google blocked over 2.5 million suspicious Android apps from the Play Store last year

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.