Google blocked 2.3 million Android app submissions to the Play Store in 2024 due to violations of its policies that made them potentially risky for users. In addition, 158,000 developer accounts were banned for attempting to publish harmful apps like malware and spyware on Android's official app store. In comparison, Google blocked 2,280,000 risky apps in 2023 and 1,500,000 apps in 2022, while the figures for blocked Play developer accounts were 333,000 and 173,000, respectively. The larger number of blocked apps in 2024 is partly attributed to AI assisting human reviews, which was used in 92% of the violating cases. "Today, over 92% of our human reviews for harmful apps are AI-assisted, allowing us to take quicker and more accurate action to help prevent harmful apps from becoming available on Google Play," explained Google. "That's enabled us to stop more bad apps than ever from reaching users through the Play Store, protecting users from harmful or malicious apps before they can cause any damage." Apart from rejections and blocks, Google reports that it has also prevented 1.3 million apps from getting excessive permissions that would have granted them unnecessary access to sensitive user data.
Google Play Protect, Android's built-in security system, received significant upgrades in 2024 to enhance real-time protection against malicious apps, scams, and fraud, even for apps installed outside the Play Store. The tech giant says Android's default protection suite scanned ov...