Google on Play Store safety and security measures in 2023

Google today highlighted how the Play Store “fought bad apps and bad actors” in 2023 through a mix of new technical advances and policy updates.

In terms of stats, Google Play last year “prevented 2.28 million policy-violating apps from being published “through a mix of “new and improved” security features, “advanced machine learning and app review processes,” and policy updates. Notable stats include:

• Google banned “333K bad accounts from Play for violations like confirmed malware and repeated severe policy violations.” Google is requiring developers to provide more information when creating Play accounts. 
• “almost 200K app submissions were rejected or remediated to ensure proper use of sensitive permissions such as background location or SMS access.”
• “To help safeguard user privacy at scale, we partnered with SDK providers to limit sensitive data access and sharing, enhancing the privacy posture for over 31 SDKs impacting 790K+ apps. We also significantly expanded the Google Play SDK Index, which now covers the SDKs used in almost 6 million apps across the Android ecosystem.”
• Of note is how Google Play made 1.5 million old applications that “do not target the most recent APIs” unavailable to “new users who have updated their devices to the latest Android version.”
• Google Play Protect’s real-time, code-level scanning to “combat novel malicious apps” that are sideloaded has “detected over 5 million new, malicious off-Play apps.”

Other use-facing changes in the Data safety section include how Google in 2023 started highlighting VPN apps that have undergone an “independent security review.” Additionally, developers must provide an option to delete application accounts and user data online so that you don’t have to reinstall an app to do so. 

The App Defense Alliance (ADA) was restructured under the Joint Development Foundation, which is part of the Linux Foundation family, with Microsoft and Meta joining the steering committee. 

The Alliance will support industry-wide adoption of app security best practices and guidelines, as well as countermeasures against emerging security risks.