Malicious Apps: How Google is making your Android phone more secure

Google has announced that it is upgrading the security capabilities of the Play Protect system that scans Android apps on phones and alerts users about any malicious apps. The company said that the new, more powerful capabilities can now scan apps in real-time to combat novel malicious apps.
“Google Play Protect will now recommend a real-time app scan when installing apps that have never been scanned before to help detect emerging threats,” the company said.
Available first in India
The enhancement to Google Play Protect has started to roll out to all Android devices with Google Play services in select countries, starting with India. It will expand to all regions in the coming months.
What is Google Play Protect
Google Play Protect is enabled on all Android smartphones and it is a built-in protection against malware and unwanted software available with Google Play Services. The company says that Play Protect scans 125 billion apps daily for malware, and if it finds a potentially harmful app, Google Play Protect sends users a warning, preventing an app install, or disabling the app automatically.
What’s new
As hackers find new ways, such as polymorphic malware, to avoid detection, it becomes difficult to catch these apps. With increasing numbers of apps that store financial data, health records, passwords and pictures, it is even more important that users’ data is protected.
“They’re turning to social engineering to trick users into doing something dangerous, such as revealing confidential information or downloading a malicious app from ephemeral sources – most commonly via links to download malicious apps or downloads directly through messaging apps,” Google said.
Google Play Protect also offers users protection outside of Google Play by checking Android devices for potentially harmful apps regardless of the install source. The new capability will now check for apps at the code-level which means that if there is a malicious code, Google Play Protect will raise an alarm.
“Scanning will extract important signals from the app and send them to the Play Protect backend infrastructure for a code-level evaluation. Once the real-time analysis is complete, users will get a result letting them know if the app looks safe to install or if the scan determined the app is potentially harmful,” the company explained.
Other safety features on Android
Apart from Google Play Protect, Android offers a multi-layered defence system, including security updates, app permission controls, Safe Browsing, and more. There is spam and phishing protection in Messages by Google and Gmail as well.