Google blocked 2.36 million untrusted apps from reaching Android, yet risks remain

The big picture: Google is now confident in Android’s reliability and security. The company recently announced that a combined effort of human staffers and AI-powered algorithms prevented 2.36 million “policy-violating apps” from appearing on Google Play in 2024. Additionally, Google banned over 158,000 developer accounts that attempted to release potentially harmful apps on the store.

Mountain View emphasized that AI is now playing a significant role in proactively identifying malicious code. The company has long relied on a combination of human security experts and advanced threat-detection technology to combat malware. Last year, AI was instrumental in further enhancing these detection capabilities.

Google confirmed that over 92 percent of human code reviews for dangerous apps are now assisted by AI. The company is also working with developers to reduce unnecessary or “excessive” access to users’ sensitive data, with 1.3 million apps blocked in 2024 alone.

Close cooperation with app creators has proven beneficial, with over 91 percent of installed apps now using the latest protections available on Android 13 or newer OS versions.

Google also boasted about the effectiveness of its Play Protect service in providing a higher level of safety to Android users. The real-time scanning engine checks more than 200 billion installed apps on Android devices daily, looking for both known malware signatures and more advanced threats, such as polymorphic malware. In 2024, Play Protect even identified more than 13 million new malicious apps that were installed from sources other than the official Google Play store.

Mountain View stated that Play Protect will soon gain new, advanced capabilities to combat dangerous or malicious apps. However, Google failed to mention that cybercriminals are just as focused on finding ways to infiltrate Android devices by exploiting any potential vulnerabilities.

Looking at 2024 alone, complex and highly capable threats like Mandrake have managed to evade Play Protect’s detection and have affected hundreds of thousands of users. Millions of devices are still being infected by resurfacing malware, such as Necro Trojan, because users continue to download apps from unofficial sources outside the Play store.