Google’s Play Protect scanned over 50 billion apps every day for harmful behavior in 2018 protecting over 2 billion devices in the Android ecosystem every day. In 2018, the company launched a new feature that notifies users when they are installing new or rare apps. It shows a warning, giving users pause to consider whether they want to trust this app.
Once Google has fully analyzed the app and determined that it is not harmful, the notification will no longer display. In 2018, this warning showed around 100,000 times per day. Google recently enabled a security feature first introduced in Android Oreo which warns users when they are about to launch a potentially harmful app on their device.
This new warning dialog provides in-context information about the app the user is about to launch, why it think it may be harmful and what might happen if they open the app. In the notification, Google also provides clear guidance on what to do next. These in-context dialogs ensure that users are protected even if they accidentally missed an alert. Back in 2018, the company has added the ability to detect harmful apps that are installed from Play but were later found to have violated Google Play’s policies.
Though this doesn’t remove the app from the user device, it does notify the user and prevents them from opening the app accidentally. The notification gives the option to remove the app entirely.