Google recently announced that in 2017 they took action against “bad apps” by eliminating apps and developer accounts from the platform. The company claims to use machine learning to identify bad apps like impersonation, inappropriate content, and malware. Total of over 700,000 apps and 100,000 developers in 2017 got affected by this decision. Which is 70 percent more than last year.
Google also claims that “99 percent of apps with abusive contents were identified and rejected before anyone could install them”. Below are the type of apps removed by Google from Play Store.
#1 Impersonation
As per Google out of 7 lakh removed apps impersonators are the most common red signal for removing apps from Google Play. In 2017 alone, the Mountain View giant removed as much as 250,000 apps that were caught impersonating big titles. The impersonators carried out this practice through deceptive methods such as “confusable Unicode characters or hiding impersonating app icons in a different locale.”
#2 Inappropriate Content
Google is very strict and does not allow any kind of inappropriate content. As per company norms, Inappropriate content includes pornography, extreme violence, illegal activities, and hate. Google also said that they use first they use machine learning models to quickly point out the apps with inappropriate content then human reviewers jump into the scene, with tens of thousands of apps removed in the past year.
#3 Malware
Last but not the least in the business is Potentially Harmful Applications that can cause harm to the user’s device. Apps involved in phishing, fraud, and Trojans are part of this list. The tech giant claims PHAs are currently small in volume but research to remove them is being heavily invested in.
Andrew Ahn, Product Manager at Google Play recently said that “Despite the new and enhanced detection capabilities that led to record-high takedowns of bad apps and malicious developers, we know a few still manage to evade and trick our layers of defense. We take these extremely seriously and will continue to innovate our capabilities to better detect and protect against abusive apps and the malicious actors behind them. We are committed to making Google Play the most trusted and safe app store in the world”
