Because of artificial intelligence, Android is now more secure. In a single year, 2.36 million malicious apps were banned by Google
Google Play is the largest app marketplace in the world, which is why cybercriminals are always trying to introduce some malicious apps to infect millions of devices.
That's why Google, over the past few years, has had thousands and thousands of agents manually checking for various issues with its app store, but starting in 2024, they'll also start including AI.
Thanks to this, Google indicated that, in cooperation with human employees and algorithms based on artificial intelligence, it was able to block 2.36 million malicious applications in the past year (2024) on the Google Play Store.
Along the way, they also banned more than 158,000 developer accounts that tried to publish potentially malicious apps on the store.
Another noteworthy data point from Google's security report is that more than 92% of human code reviews of dangerous apps are already done with the help of AI.
They also banned 1.3 million apps in 2024 that requested highly sensitive user data.
Developers also had to take action, as Google has required apps to use the latest protections available since Android 13.
Google also talked about the Play Protect service that it has enabled by default on your Android device.
It is an engine responsible for reviewing more than 200 billion apps installed on users' Android phones in real time on a daily basis.
What this system basically does is look for known malware signatures and more advanced threats installed on users' devices when running a scan.
However, they say that in 2024, Play Protect identified more than 13 million new malicious apps that were installed from sources other than the Google Play Store.
Best of all, they added, Play Protect will include new features to combat all these dangerous apps in the coming months.