Google Says It Scans 50 Billion Android Apps Every Day to Detect Malware

Google has recently shared new data on its efforts to boost user security on Android, revealing that it’s paying much more attention to the applications that end up being available for download in the Play Store.

Last year, for example, Google rejected 55 percent more applications that in the previous year, while the share of app suspensions increased by no less than 66 percent.

All of these could have been dangerous apps reaching the Google Play Store, eventually powering malicious activities, including serving adware and collecting user data.

“These increases can be attributed to our continued efforts to tighten policies to reduce the number of harmful apps on the Play store, as well as our investments in automated protections and human review processes that play critical roles in identifying and enforcing on bad apps,” Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, Google Play, explains.

Google Play Protect, a key security tool

Ahn explains that while Google is working hard to prevent dangerous apps from reaching the Google Play Store, it’s also trying to make sure that the ones already listed for download do not receive updates or change specific features for a dangerous purpose.

As a result, Google Play Protect scans no less than 50 billion Android apps every day, the company says, which means the likelihood of an app from Google Play to cause any damage is eight times lower than when getting apps from various sources.

Google promises it’ll continue to focus on user privacy in 2019, with more policies to be announced in the coming months.

“In October 2018, we announced a new policy restricting the use of the SMS and Call Log permissions to a limited number of cases, such as where an app has been selected as the user's default app for making calls or sending text messages,” Ahn stated.

“We've recently started to remove apps from Google Play that violate this policy. We plan to introduce additional policies for device permissions and user data throughout 2019.”

Google says that its data shows 80 percent of the malicious apps are developed by so-called repeat offenders and abusive developer networks, and the company says it’ll pay more attention to these categories in the future.