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Advisorygoogle-security-how-we-kept-google-play-android-app-ecosystem-safe-2024-c6be20d2a936

How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024

Posted by Bethel Otuteye and Khawaja Shams (Android Security and Privacy Team), and Ron Aquino (Play Trust and Safety) Android and Google Play comprise a vibrant ecosystem with billions of users around the globe and millions of helpful apps.

At a glance

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Read the exact official research article before applying its defensive techniques or drawing conclusions.

Read Google Security Research: How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024 (opens a new tab)

What happened

Posted by Bethel Otuteye and Khawaja Shams (Android Security and Privacy Team), and Ron Aquino (Play Trust and Safety)

Android and Google Play comprise a vibrant ecosystem with billions of users around the globe and millions of helpful apps. Keeping this ecosystem safe for users and developers remains our top priority. However, like any flourishing ecosystem, it also attracts its share of bad actors.

That’s why every year, we continue to invest in more ways to protect our community and fight bad actors, so users can trust the apps they download from Google Play and developers can build thriving businesses.

Last year, those investments included AI-powered threat detection, stronger privacy policies, supercharged developer tools, new industry-wide alliances, and more. As a result, we prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish harmful apps.

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But that was just the start. For more, take a look at our recent highlights from 2024:

Google’s advanced AI: helping make Google Play a safer place

To keep out bad actors, we have always used a combination of human security experts and the latest threat-detection technology. In 2024, we used Google’s advanced AI to improve our systems’ ability to proactively identify malware, enabling us to detect and block bad apps more effectively. It also helps us streamline review processes for developers with a proven track record of policy compliance.

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.

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.

Working with developers to enhance security and privacy on Google Play

To protect user privacy, we’re working with developers to reduce unnecessary access to sensitive data. In 2024, we prevented 1.3 million apps from getting excessive or unnecessary access to sensitive user data.

We also required apps to be more transparent about how they handle user information by launching new developer requirements and a new “Data deletion” option for apps that support user accounts and data collection. This helps users manage their app data and understand the app’s deletion practices, making it easier for Play users to delete data collected from third-party apps.

We also worked to ensure that apps use the strongest and most up-to-date privacy and security capabilities Android has to offer. Every new version of Android introduces new security and privacy features, and we encourage developers to embrace these advancements as soon as possible. As a result of partnering closely with developers, over 91% of app installs on the Google Play Store now use the latest protections of Android 13 or newer.

Safeguarding apps from scams and fraud is an ongoing battle for developers. The Play Integrity API allows developers to check if their apps have been tampered with or are running in potentially compromised environments, helping them to prevent abuse like fraud, bots, cheating, and data theft.

Play Integrity API and Play’s automatic protection helps developers ensure that users are using the official Play version of their app with the latest security updates. Apps using Play integrity features are seeing 80% lower usage from unverified and untrusted sources on average.

We’re also constantly working to improve the safety of apps on Play at scale, such as with the Google Play SDK Index . This tool offers insights and data to help developers make more informed decisions about the safety of an SDK. Last year, in addition to adding 80 SDKs to the index, we also worked closely with SDK and app developers to address potential SDK security and privacy issues, helping to build safer and more secure apps for Google Play.

Google Play’s multi-layered protections against bad apps

To create a trusted experience for everyone on Google Play, we use our SAFE principles as a guide, incorporating multi-layered protections that are always evolving to help keep Google Play safe. These protections start with the developers themselves, who play a crucial role in building secure apps.

We provide developers with best-in-class tools , best practices , and on-demand training resources for building safe, high-quality apps. Every app undergoes rigorous review and testing , with only approved apps allowed to appear in the Play Store. Before a user downloads an app from Play, users can explore its user reviews, ratings, and Data safety section on Google Play to help them make an informed decision.

And once installed, Google Play Protect , Android’s built-in security protection, helps to shield their Android device by continuously scanning for malicious app behavior.

Enhancing Google Play Protect to help keep users safe on Android

While the Play Store offers best-in-class security, we know it’s not the only place users download Android apps – so it’s important that we also defend Android users from more generalized mobile threats. To do this in an open ecosystem, we’ve invested in sophisticated, real-time defenses that protect against scams, malware, and abusive apps.

These intelligent security measures help to keep users, user data, and devices safe, even if apps are installed from various sources with varying levels of security.

Google Play Protect automatically scans every app on Android devices with Google Play Services, no matter the download source. This built-in protection, enabled by default, provides crucial security against malware and unwanted software.

Google Play Protect scans more than 200 billion apps daily and performs real-time scanning at the code-level on novel apps to combat emerging and hidden threats, like polymorphic malware. In 2024, Google Play Protect’s real-time scanning identified more than 13 million new malicious apps from outside Google Play 1 .

Google Play Protect is always evolving to combat new threats and protect users from harmful apps that can lead to scams and fraud. Here are some of the new improvements that are now available globally on Android devices with Google Play Services:

Reminder notifications in Chrome on Android to re-enable Google Play Protect: According to our research, more than 95 percent of app installations from major malware families that exploit sensitive permissions highly correlated to financial fraud came from Internet-sideloading sources like web browsers, messaging apps, or file managers.

To help users stay protected when browsing the web, Chrome will now display a reminder notification to re-enable Google Play Protect if it has been turned off.

Additional protection against social engineering attacks: Scammers may manipulate users into disabling Play Protect during calls to download malicious Internet-sideloaded apps. To prevent this, the Play Protect app scanning toggle is now temporarily disabled during phone or video calls. This safeguard is enabled by default during traditional phone calls as well as during voice and video calls in popular third-party apps.

Automatically revoking app permissions for potentially dangerous apps: Since Android 11, we’ve taken a proactive approach to data privacy by automatically resetting permissions for apps that users haven't used in a while . This ensures apps can only access the data they truly need, and users can always grant permissions back if necessary.

To further enhance security, Play Protect now automatically revokes permissions for potentially harmful apps, limiting their access to sensitive data like storage, photos, and camera. Users can restore app permissions at any time, with a confirmation step for added security.

Google Play Protect’s enhanced fraud protection pilot analyzes and automatically blocks th

Related technology

Sources

  1. Primary source

    Google Security Research: How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024 (opens a new tab)

    Exact official article/advisory identified by the feed; title, source dates, and any supplied article excerpt.

    Published Checked

  2. Primary source

    Google Security Research syndication feed (opens a new tab)

    The RSS/Atom/RDF entry supplied this exact link and any available title, date, and excerpt.

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Cite this record

For factual claims, cite the primary sources above; cite KEVWire for its compilation, dates, and classifications.

APA

KEVWire. (2025, January 29). How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024. https://kevwire.com/record/google-security-how-we-kept-google-play-android-app-ecosystem-safe-2024-c6be20d2a936

MLA

"How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024." KEVWire, 29 Jan. 2025, kevwire.com/record/google-security-how-we-kept-google-play-android-app-ecosystem-safe-2024-c6be20d2a936.

Chicago

KEVWire. "How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024." Last modified January 29, 2025. https://kevwire.com/record/google-security-how-we-kept-google-play-android-app-ecosystem-safe-2024-c6be20d2a936.

Evidence summary (plain text)

How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024 (Jan 29, 2025).
Posted by Bethel Otuteye and Khawaja Shams (Android Security and Privacy Team), and Ron Aquino (Play Trust and Safety) 

Android and Google Play comprise a vibrant ecosystem with billions of users around the globe and millions of helpful apps. Keeping this ecosystem safe for users and developers remains our top priority. However, like any flourishing ecosystem, it also attracts its share of bad actors. That’s why every year, we continue to invest in more ways to protect our community and fight bad actors, so users can trust the apps they download from Google Play and developers can build thriving businesses. 

Last year, those investments included AI-powered threat detection, stronger privacy policies, supercharged developer tools, new industry-wide alliances, and more. As a result, we prevented 2.36 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play and banned more than 158,000 bad developer accounts that attempted to publish harmful apps. 

But that was just the start. For more, take a look at our recent highlights from 2024:

 Google’s advanced AI: helping make Google Play a safer place

To keep out bad actors, we have always used a combination of human security experts and the latest threat-detection technology. In 2024, we used Google’s advanced AI to improve our systems’ ability to proactively identify malware, enabling us to detect and block bad apps more effectively. It also helps us streamline review processes for developers with a proven track record of policy compliance. 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.

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.

 Working with developers to enhance security and privacy on Google Play

To protect user privacy, we’re wo
Sources:
Google Security Research: How we kept the Google Play & Android app ecosystems safe in 2024: https://security.googleblog.com/2025/01/how-we-kept-google-play-android-app-ecosystem-safe-2024.html
Google Security Research syndication feed: https://security.googleblog.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss&redirect=false&max-results=50
Record ID: google-security-how-we-kept-google-play-android-app-ecosystem-safe-2024-c6be20d2a936.
Record origin: Ingested record.
AI evidence: Not assessed.
About this data

This record was ingested from a data source. Retrieved: Oct 26, 2026, 21:35 UTC. Ingestion is not an independent editorial investigation.

Technology tags indicate possible relevance, not verified exposure. Confirm the affected product, version, and configuration against your own inventory; KEVWire does not scan your systems.

A personal reading checklist on this device, not verified remediation.

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