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Google's Play Shop offers developers a faster, more open experience than Apple'south version, which comes with lengthy reviews and seemingly random rejections. The Play Store has evolved over the years, and today is much more secure than it was back when we knew information technology as the Android Market. Google reports that information technology took down more than 700,000 "bad" apps in 2017, and information technology did so faster than always before.

When a developer uploads an app to Google, it goes through a number of automated systems that wait for malicious activeness. Annihilation questionable is routed to a human reviewer. In most cases, apps are available on the shop in a thing of hours. In the past, this has made it more than likely bad actors could sneak malicious content into the Play Store, simply Google'due south been working to reduce the likelihood that users volition ever come across those apps.

The 700,000 apps removed from the Play Shop in 2017 marks a lxx percent increment over 2016. These aren't all malware or spyware, though. Most of them are only "bad" apps because they violate Google'south increasingly strict developer guidelines that dictate how apps can run on your phone, display ads, and then on.

Some of those apps are only erstwhile listings that haven't been updated and ran afoul of new rules, but others were newly uploaded packages that attempted to evade detection while breaking the rules. A substantial portion of the bad apps were copycats impersonating popular apps in hopes of getting downloads. They often use confusable unicode characters to try and evade detection, but Google's on to that. Then there are the inappropriate apps that contain content non permitted in the Play Store — porn, gore, hate speech, and so on are all banned from Google's platform. Google used an improved machine learning model to discover these apps and bounce them before they went live.

Online criminals will never cease trying to sneak actual malware into the Play Store. Apps that try to steal data or transport fraudulent premium SMS messages occasionally evade detection, but Google says the improved Play Protect model lowered the number of malware installs by a gene of ten compared to 2016.

Google notes that it removed trouble apps faster than information technology had in past years. Across all categories, 99 percent of bad apps were removed from the Play Shop before getting even a single download. Google also has advanced detection networks that tin can identify banned developers when they try to create new accounts, and so hopefully the numbers await even amend next year.

Now read: 25 Android Tips to Brand Your Phone More than Useful