Although several malicious applications have been discovered in some of the stores, either for Android or iOS, the reality is that every application that want to make its journey to the public store has to succeed a rigorous analysis.

Andrew Ahn, Product Manager of Google Play, ensures that 99% of the malicious applications were successfully detected and rejected during the review process before anyone could install them.

These numbers were published today in an end-of-year report, by Ahn.

Additionally Google says that more than 700,000 Apps were removed in 2017 because of the malicious content or malicious intent. Mainly the big issue was subdivided into 3 categories:

Copycats : Fake apps that impersonate legitimate ones and when they got installed, the do its malicious activity.

: Fake apps that impersonate legitimate ones and when they got installed, the do its malicious activity. Inappropriate Content: Apps that contain violence, pornography, hate and of course, illegal activities.

Apps that contain violence, pornography, hate and of course, illegal activities. PHA (Potentially Harmful Applications): Apps with malware that can harm devices putting on risk the person integrity ot its PII, like malicious SMS, Trojans, phishing, etc.

The problem doesn’t stop with the apps, also portion of the problem are the developers creating such applications, that’s why Google also banned more than 100,000 developer accounts that belonged to bad actors who tried to create more accounts in order to create and publish more of the malicious developments.

“We are committed to make Google Play the most trusted and safe app store in the world” Ahn (@android-developers.googleblog.com) 30.01.2018