6mo ago

Google blocked 2.36 million untrusted apps from reaching Android, yet risks remain

www.techspot.com

Google blocked 2.36 million untrusted apps from reaching Android, yet risks remain | TechSpot

5 comments

I feel safer with F-droid than I do downloading random unknown apps from Google play.
- Yep. And combined with obsidian you can mostly rely on open source apps.
- I rarely get anything from the play store. Usually f-droid or one of the other apps like Droidify or Izzy, and Aurora. Once in a while an app demands to verify with the Play store for the life of me I have no idea why… Plexus has helped with that sometimes, but sometimes doesn’t work.
human staffers and AI-powered algorithms prevented 2.36 million "policy-violating apps" from appearing on Google Play in 2024
I wouldn't assume it's 100% malware. A portion, hopefully a small one, are legitimate apps that faced automated rejection with automatically generated reply citing a vague "policy-violation". A few open-source apps wrote on their blog they gave up uploading to Google Play because of its disfunctional moderation. Some even gave up developing their app.
For instance, see https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/issues/2064
- Yep, many false positives while only blocking 1.5% of all malicious apps, plus installing Play Protect on phones to "block malware" from the Play Store.
  It's like someone wrote a comedy based on the worst way to prevent malicious app installs.
  Which begs the question, what's the real purpose of Play Protect? Protect your FROM Play Store installations? 😁
  (Yea, that 1.5% is a totally made up number, it's as real as Google's malware prevention and the protection provided by Play Protect).