- Google says it blocked 2.36 million android applications from Play Store in 2024
- Hundreds of thousands of developer accounts were also prohibited
- Google says that the help of AI was behind its blockade of more applications than in previous years
Google says he blocked 2.36 million applications presentations made in Play Store in 2024 because they violated their policies and, as such, a potential risk of cybersecurity.
In a Google security blog post, the company described how, in addition to blocked applications, it also prohibited 158,000 developer accounts that tried to push malware and spyware to the application repository.
Comparing these figures with 2023 and 2022, Google showed an increase in the number of blocked applications and accounts of application developers. The previous year, he blocked 2.28 million, and in 2022 – 1.5 million. As for developers, it blocked 333,000 and 173,000 respectively.
With a little help from my AI
Detailing how he could achieve these results, Google said he received help from artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, in 92% of the positive results, human reviewers were assisted by AI.
“Today, more than 92% of our human reviews for harmful applications are assisted by AI-AI, which allows us to take faster and more precise measures to help prevent harmful applications from being available on Google Play,” said the company.
“That has allowed us to avoid more bad applications that never reach users through Play Store, protecting users from harmful or malicious applications before they can cause damage.”
Malicious applications can be more easily identified by the permits they request. Too demanding applications are usually a red flag, and last year, Google blocked 1.3 million applications to obtain excessive permits.
Most malicious Android applications reside on third -party websites, or are distributed through chat messages, email, forums and others. While Google usually does a great job by keeping its application repository clean, a small number of dangerous applications exceeds protections from time to time.
That is why, in addition to ensuring that the applications are covered by Google’s Play Protect system, it is always recommended to verify the number of downloads and read the reviews, before downloading any application.
