Google Banned 2.28 Million Policy-Violating Apps From Being Published On Play Store: Read Why

File Photo

New Delhi: American technology company, Google has announced that it prevented 2.28 million policy-violating apps from being published on its play store in 2023. Moreover, it banned 333,000 accounts from the play store due to violations such as confirmed malware and repeated severe policy breaches which are created by criminals and fraud rings.

To ensure the proper use of sensitive permissions like background location or SMS access, the tech giant rejected or fixed nearly 200,000 app submissions. Google partnered with SDK (Software Development Kit) providers to restrict access to sensitive data and its sharing to protect user privacy on a large scale. This effort impacted over 790,000 apps, enhancing their privacy practices. ()

Furthermore, Google improved its Google Play Protect security features to better safeguard users who download apps from sources outside of the play store. This enhancement includes real-time scanning of app code to detect and counter new types of malicious apps. ()

"Our security protections and machine learning algorithms learn from each app submitted to Google for review and we look at thousands of signals and compare app behaviour," Google stated.

The company reported that this new feature has already identified over 5 million new malicious apps downloaded from sources outside of the Play Store. This contributes to the global protection of Android users.

Further, the tech company mentioned that apps allowing account creation must now offer an option for users to delete their account and associated data both within the app and online, giving users more control over their personal information.