Why did Google remove 1.2 million apps?

Statistics on the level of safety in 2021, the company Google said it has banned about 190,000 accounts of malicious app developers on the Play Store, according to technology news site Neowin. This is much higher than 119,000 in 2020.

Additionally, 1.2 million apps that violated Google’s policies were removed last year. According to Google, this means they have prevented billions of installs that could potentially harm users.

“More than 500,000 inactive and abandoned developer accounts have also been closed,” the Google representative added.

Hundreds of thousands of malicious developer accounts disappeared from the Play Store in 2021. Photo: Reuters

Google also talks about recent efforts to make the Play Store a safer space for users.

For example, the company launched data safety features on the Play Store and a central application policy management interface for developers. At the same time, Google is working to make its software development kit (SDK) safer for billions of users.

The company notes that 98% of apps migrating to Android 11 have restricted access to sensitive application programming interfaces (APIs).

“We’re also committed to continuing to make Android a great place for families. Last year, we didn’t allow advertising IDs and other device identifiers to be collected from all users in our stores. The app is targeted at children only, and gives all users the ability to completely remove the advertising ID, regardless of the app.

Finally, for Pixel phones, Google provides users with a security hub to get an overview and recommendations on the device’s security status.

“Pixel phone hardware uses new machine learning models that leverage federated analytics to detect malicious apps and rule them out” – expert Neowin quoted Google’s statement said.