Google barred 1.43m Android apps in fight against fraud

Google claims it banned over 173,000 developer accounts and 1.43 million apps from Play Store to combat malicious fraud rings in the space of just a single year.

The US software giant said its machine learning-assisted app review process prevented 1.43 million policy-violating apps from being published on the Play Store, the primary app market for Android devices, in 2022.

“We also continued to combat malicious developers and fraud rings, banning 173,000 bad accounts and preventing over $2 billion in fraudulent and abusive transactions,” Google said in a blog post reviewing last year’s results.

The company also boasted of preventing half a million apps from unnecessarily accessing sensitive permissions in the past three years. The Cybernews research team has found many Android apps that have been asking for dangerous permissions in the past.

Google said the company added additional requirements for developers who want to publish their work on the Play Store. To upload software, developers need to verify their identity using their phone and email. The company believes these measures reduced the number of apps that violate Google’s policies.

“As the Android ecosystem expands, it’s critical for us to work closely with the developer community to ensure they have the tools, knowledge, and support to build secure and trustworthy apps that respect user data security and privacy,” Google said.

The company said it also launched the Google Play SDK (software development kit) Index that helps developers to evaluate whether an SDK is safe and reliable to use in developing an app.