Google claimed in yesterday’s update that it’s making it harder for malicious developers to publish their software to the Play Store while mass-removing malicious accounts.
The tech giant said it raised the bar for new developers by removing 173,000 fraudulent accounts in 2022 and adding phone, email, and “other identity verification methods.”
This allowed the company to reduce the number of accounts used to publish apps that violated its policies. Google says it has blocked 1.43 million of those apps from being published on the Play Marketplace.
Overall, Google estimates it has prevented $2 billion in “fraudulent and abusive” transactions.
For more information on Google Play security threats, see Goldoson malware found in Google Play Store apps.
“We continued to partner with SDK providers to strengthen our privacy posture for over one million apps on Google Play to restrict access and sharing of sensitive data,” the blog post added.
Thanks to stronger Android platform protections and policies, as well as developer outreach and education, Google also found that nearly 500,000 submitted apps in the last three years unnecessarily accessed sensitive permissions. said to have prevented it from doing so.
In fact, outreach to developers seems to be becoming increasingly important in Google’s efforts to make the Android ecosystem safer for users.
To that end, Google launched the App Security Improvements program last year. The program helped the developer fix 500,000 of his security vulnerabilities, and with nearly 250 billion installs he affected 300,000 apps.
A helpline pilot will also launch in 2022 to help developers with policy questions. The new Google Play developer community is also in pilot and aims to provide a platform for developers to discuss policy issues and share best practices.
“We also launched the Google Play SDK Index to help developers assess the reliability and safety of their SDKs and make informed decisions about whether an SDK is right for their business and users.” added the tech giant. “We will continue to work closely with our SDK providers to make their apps and SDKs more secure, limit how user data is shared, and improve communication with app developers.”
However, despite Google’s best efforts, malicious apps continue to invade the Play Store with alarming frequency. Most recently, McAfee discovered dozens of his Minecraft games containing the HiddenAds Trojan malware.
