Fewer bad actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, the company says, a change the tech giant credits to increased investment in proactive security systems and AI technology.
At the latest Android app ecosystem security report released on Thursday, Google said it will prevent 1.75 million apps that violate its policy from being published on Google Play by 2025, down from 2.36 million in 2024 and 2.28 million in 2023.
The annual report offers a look at how Google keeps Android users safe by reviewing and monitoring apps to protect against malware, financial fraud, privacy invasions, sneaky subscriptions, and other threats.
For example, Google says it will ban more than 80,000 developer accounts by 2025 that have tried to publish these types of malicious apps. The number also decreases annually from 158,000 in 2024, and 333,000 in 2023.
Google mentioned how its investments in AI and other real-time defenses are helping to combat these threats, but also how to prevent them.
“Initiatives like developer verification, mandatory pre-review checks, and testing requirements have raised the standards for the Google Play ecosystem, significantly reducing the path for bad actors to enter,” the company’s blog post explained, adding that “multi-layer protection powered by AI” has “discourage bad actors from publishing bad apps.”
Google notes that it currently performs more than 10,000 security checks on every app it publishes and continues to re-check apps after they are published. The company has also integrated the latest generative AI models into the app review process, which helps human reviewers spot more complex malicious patterns faster. Google says it plans to increase its AI investment by 2026 to stay ahead of emerging threats.
In addition, Google said it prevented more than 255,000 apps from gaining excessive access to sensitive user data, a figure down from 1.3 million in 2024. The company also blocked 160 million spam ratings and reviews last year, and prevented an average 0.5 star rating drop for targeted apps. bombing review.
Meanwhile, Android’s defense system, known as Google Play Protect, identifies more than 27 million new malicious apps, and warns users or blocks them from running. This is an increase from the 13 million non-Play Store apps identified in 2024 and the five million seen in 2023. This increase seems to indicate that bad actors are now more likely to avoid the Play Store when targeting users with malicious apps.