Google eliminated more than 7 Lakh malicious applications in 2017 from Play Store that broke its rules. This was 70% more as compared to the applications it removed in 2016. This data was given by the firm to the media this week. “Not only did we eliminate more bad applications, we were capable of identifying and taking action in opposition to them earlier,” Product Manager at Google Play, Andrew Ahn, claimed to the media in an interview.
In fact, 99% of applications with abusive materials were rejected and identified before anybody can install them, he further claimed. Google has designed new detection techniques and models that can verify abusive developer networks and repeat offenders at scale. Google also eliminated in 2017 almost 100,000 bad developers. “This was achievable via noteworthy enhancements in our capability to detect abuse such as inappropriate content, impersonation, or malware via latest Machine Learning techniques and models,” the firm claimed.
“Copycats” applications try to mislead consumers by mimicking famous applications. They do this by attempting to sneak in mimicking applications to the Play Store via misleading approaches such as hiding mimicking application icons in a different setting or using confusable unicode characters. “Last year, we removed more than 0.25 Million of mimicking applications,” Google claimed to the media.
When it comes to inappropriate material such as extreme violence, pornography, illegal, and hate activities, improved machine learning models of Google filtered via huge amounts of incoming submissions of apps and marked them for possible breaches. “Thousands of millions of apps with unsuitable material were removed in 2017 in consequence of such enhanced detection approaches,” the firm claimed. PHAs (Potentially Harmful Applications) are a kind of malware that can injure people or their gadgets such as apps that act as Trojans, conduct SMS fraud, or phish information of users.