The Android ecosystem is a thriving international neighborhood constructed on belief, giving billions of customers the arrogance to obtain the newest apps. With a purpose to preserve that belief, we’re centered on making certain that apps don’t trigger real-world hurt, comparable to malware, monetary fraud, hidden subscriptions, and privateness invasions. As dangerous actors leverage AI to alter their techniques and launch more and more refined assaults, we’ve deepened our investments in AI and real-time defenses during the last yr to keep up the higher hand and cease these threats earlier than they attain customers.
Upgrading Google Play’s AI-powered, multi-layered person protections
We’ve seen a transparent influence from these security efforts on Google Play. In 2025, we prevented over 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being revealed on Google Play and banned greater than 80,000 dangerous developer accounts that tried to publish dangerous apps. These figures display how our proactive protections and push for a extra accountable ecosystem are discouraging dangerous actors from publishing malicious apps, whereas our new instruments assist trustworthy builders construct compliant apps extra simply. Initiatives like developer verification, necessary pre-review checks, and testing necessities have raised the bar for the Google Play ecosystem, considerably lowering the paths for dangerous actors to enter.
Consumer security is on the core of all the pieces we construct. Through the years, we’ve regularly launched methods to assist customers keep protected and make knowledgeable app selections — from parental controls to information security transparency and app badges. We’re consistently bettering our insurance policies and protections to encourage protected, high-quality apps on Google Play and cease dangerous actors earlier than they trigger hurt.
Apps on Google Play bear rigorous evaluations for security and compliance with our insurance policies. Final yr, we shared that Google Play runs over 10,000 security checks on each app we publish, and we proceed to examine and recheck apps after they’ve been revealed. In 2025, we continued scaling our defenses even additional by:
- Boosting AI-enhanced app detection: We built-in Google’s newest generative AI fashions into our assessment course of, serving to our human assessment crew proceed to seek out complicated malicious patterns sooner.
- Stopping pointless entry to delicate information: We prevented over 255,000 apps from getting extreme entry to delicate person information and continued to strengthen our privateness insurance policies. Our dedication to privacy-forward app growth, supported by instruments like Play Coverage Insights in Android Studio and Information security part, has empowered builders to proceed to: reduce privacy-sensitive permission requests, and prioritize the person of their design selections.
- Blocking spam rankings and evaluations: Whether or not they result in assessment inflation or deflation, spam rankings and evaluations can negatively influence our customers’ belief and our builders’ progress. We’re regularly evolving our detection fashions to assist guarantee app evaluations are correct. Our anti-spam protections blocked 160 million spam rankings and evaluations final yr, together with inflated and deflated evaluations. We additionally prevented a median 0.5-star score drop for apps focused by assessment bombing, defending our customers and builders from unhelpful evaluations.
- Safeguarding children and households: Our strategy to children and households is constructed on the core perception that kids deserve a protected, enriching digital surroundings. Our dedication is to empower mother and father with strong instruments whereas offering kids with entry to high-quality, age-appropriate content material. Final yr, we introduced new layers of safety, along with our present safeguards, to stop youthful audiences from discovering or downloading apps involving actions like playing or relationship.
Enhancing Google Play Shield to assist maintain the whole Android ecosystem protected
We additionally continued to enhance our protections for the broader Android ecosystem, by increasing Google Play Shield and real-time safety measures like in-call rip-off protections to assist maintain customers protected from scams, fraud, and different threats.
As Android’s built-in protection towards malware and undesirable software program, Google Play Shield now scans over 350 billion Android apps day by day. This proactive safety consistently checks each Play apps and people from different sources to make sure they aren’t probably dangerous. And, final yr, its real-time scanning functionality recognized greater than 27 million new malicious apps from outdoors Google Play, warning customers or blocking the app to neutralize the risk. To profit from these protections, we advocate that customers all the time maintain Google Play Shield on.
Whereas fraudsters are consistently evolving their techniques, Google Play Shield is evolving sooner. Final yr, we expanded:
- Enhanced fraud safety: Google Play Shield’s enhanced fraud safety analyzes and routinely blocks the set up of apps that will abuse delicate permissions to commit monetary fraud. This safety is triggered when a person makes an attempt to put in an app from an “Web-sideloading supply” — comparable to an online browser or messaging app — that requests a delicate permission. Constructing on the success of our preliminary pilot in Singapore, we expanded enhanced fraud safety to 185 markets, now masking greater than 2.8 billion Android gadgets. In 2025, we blocked 266 million dangerous set up makes an attempt and helped defend customers from 872,000 distinctive, high-risk functions.
- In-call rip-off safety: We additionally launched new protections to fight social engineering assaults throughout cellphone calls. This function preemptively disables the flexibility to show off Google Play Shield throughout cellphone calls, stopping dangerous actors from with the ability to trick customers into disabling their system’s built-in defenses to obtain a malicious app whereas on a name.
Partnering with builders for a safer, privacy-friendly future
Conserving Android and Google Play protected requires deep collaboration. We need to thank our international developer neighborhood for his or her partnership and for sharing their suggestions on the instruments and help they should succeed.
In 2025, we centered on lowering friction for builders and offering them with instruments to safeguard their companies:
- Constructing safer apps extra simply: We’re serving to builders streamline their work by bringing insights straight into their pure workflows. It begins with Play Coverage Insights in Android Studio, which provides builders real-time suggestions as they code. We centered first on permissions and APIs that grant deeper system entry or deal with private information, like location or pictures. This provides builders a head begin on coverage necessities, together with distinguished disclosures or utilization declarations, whereas they’re nonetheless constructing. When builders transfer to Play Console to organize their apps for submission, our expanded pre-review checks assist catch widespread causes for rejection, like improper utilization of credentials or permissions and damaged privateness coverage hyperlinks, making certain smoother, sooner evaluations.
- Stronger risk detection with Play Integrity API: On daily basis, apps and video games make over 20 billion checks with Play Integrity API to guard towards abuse and unauthorized entry. In 2025, we added hardware-backed indicators to make it even tougher for dangerous actors to spoof gadgets and launched new in-app prompts that allow customers repair widespread points like community errors with out leaving the app. We additionally launched system recall in beta to assist builders establish repeat dangerous actors even after a tool has been reset, all whereas defending person privateness.
- Constructing belief by way of developer verification: We’ve seen how efficient developer verification is on Google Play, and now we’re making use of these classes to the broader Android ecosystem. By making certain there’s a actual, accountable id behind each app, verification helps legitimize genuine builders and prevents dangerous actors from hiding behind anonymity to repeatedly trigger hurt. After gathering suggestions throughout our early entry interval, we’ll open up verification to all builders this yr. We’ve additionally added a devoted account kind for college kids and hobbyists, which can enable them to distribute these apps to a restricted variety of gadgets with out the total verification necessities.
- Larger safety with each Android launch: In Android 16, builders can defend customers’ most personal info, like financial institution logins, with only one line of code. We’ve built-in this function routinely to sure apps for an prompt safety increase towards “tapjacking,” a trick the place dangerous apps use hidden layers to steal clicks for advert fraud.
Trying forward
Our high precedence stays making Google Play and Android essentially the most trusted app ecosystems for everybody. This yr, we’ll proceed to spend money on AI-driven defenses to remain forward of rising threats and equip Android builders with the instruments they should construct apps safely. To empower builders who distribute their apps on Google Play, we’ll preserve our deal with embedding checks to assist construct apps which might be compliant by design, whereas offering steering to assist proactively keep away from coverage violations earlier than an app is revealed. We’ll additionally roll out Android developer verifications to carry dangerous actors accountable and stop them from hiding behind anonymity to trigger repeated hurt.
Thanks for being a part of the Google Play and Android neighborhood as we work collectively to construct a safer app ecosystem.
