Google Pulled ‘Bad’ Android Apps in 2017 Faster Than Ever Before

Google’s Play Store offers developers a faster, more open experience than Apple’s version, which comes with lengthy reviews and seemingly random rejections. The Play Store has evolved over the years, and today is much more secure than it was back when we knew it as the Android Market. Google reports that it took down more than 700,000 “bad” apps in 2017, and it did so faster than ever before.

When a developer uploads an app to Google, it goes through a number of automated systems that look for malicious activity. Anything questionable is routed to a human reviewer. In most cases, apps are available on the store in a matter of hours. In the past, this has made it more likely bad actors could sneak malicious content into the Play Store, but Google’s been working to reduce the likelihood that users will ever encounter those apps.

The 700,000 apps removed from the Play Store in 2017 marks a 70 percent increase over 2016. These aren’t all malware or spyware, though. Most of them are simply “bad” apps because they violate Google’s increasingly strict developer guidelines that dictate how apps can run on your phone, display ads, and so on.

Some of those apps are merely old listings that haven’t been updated and ran afoul of new rules, but others were newly uploaded packages that attempted to evade detection while breaking the rules. A substantial portion of the bad apps were copycats impersonating popular apps in hopes of getting downloads. They often use confusable unicode characters to try and evade detection, but Google’s on to that. Then there are the inappropriate apps that contain content not permitted in the Play Store — porn, gore, hate speech, and so on are all banned from Google’s platform. Google used an improved machine learning model to detect these apps and bounce them before they went live.

Online criminals will never stop trying to sneak actual malware into the Play Store. Apps that try to steal data or send fraudulent premium SMS messages occasionally evade detection, but Google says the improved Play Protect model lowered the number of malware installs by a factor of ten compared to 2016.

Google notes that it removed problem apps faster than it had in past years. Across all categories, 99 percent of bad apps were removed from the Play Store before getting even a single download. Google also has advanced detection networks that can identify banned developers when they try to create new accounts, so hopefully the numbers look even better next year.

Continue reading

Should Spectre, Meltdown Be the Death Knell for the x86 Standard?

Spectre and Meltdown are serious CPU flaws, but do they warrant throwing out the entire closed-source CPU model?

Nvidia Goes All-In On G-Sync With New ‘BFGD’ Ultra-High-End Displays

Nvidia is bringing some of the highest-end displays imaginable to market in 2018, with 4K panels, 120Hz refresh rates, low latency displays, integrated Nvidia Shields, and support for 1,000 nits of brightness in HDR. Yowza.

Huawei’s Phone Deal With AT&T Reportedly Killed On Account of Politics

The upcoming (and unannounced) deal with AT&T to sell the new Mate 10 series was supposed to be the start of Huawei's push into North America, but the deal has reportedly fallen apart at the last minute after AT&T got cold feet, and some sources point to a political cause.

ET Deals Roundup: $200 Gift Card with Samsung 4K TV for $600, $50 Price Drop on Inspiron 15 7000, and more

Ready to upgrade to a 4K television? Maybe you're looking for a new laptop for school, or searching for the perfect camera for an upcoming vacation. Well, there are plenty of discounts floating around this week, so we've put together a list of the hottest deals. If you're looking to save big on new gear, you're bound to find something worthwhile below.