In all fairness, in its early days security on Android, especially in relation to installing apps and accepting them into the app store (at the time Android Market, later Google Play), left much to be desired. This allowed many very legitimate apps to arrive quickly, but along the way a lot of malware also crept in, making the store not very reliable for many users.

Fortunately, This has changed substantially over the years.. It is true that malicious apps are still sneaking in today, but it is no less true that cybercriminals have to resort either to much more sophisticated techniques if they want to publish them on Google Play, or to trick users with any pretext that they are downloading and installing them from other repositories , which of course escape Google’s control.

But even in these cases Android comes with multiple features that aim to protect users from malware which can reach your devices through these routes. In this way, between store security measures and those of the operating system itself, using Google Play and other trusted stores is something we can do with enough peace of mind, although it never hurts to check the permissions required by each application. , because you know.

Google will add another layer of protection when installing shallow apps

PIN or biometric verification will now be required in certain cases.

Read – https://t.co/mamhafVsfq#Google #Android pic.twitter.com/KRgwbt2Rho

— AssembleDebug (Shiv) (@AssembleDebug) June 17, 2024

The problem comes with installing APKs from unofficial repositories and other sources. In this regard, the operating system has offered to scan applications from any source for some time, but this is an easily workaround process. However, this is about to change because, as AssembleDebug explains on his Twitter, To bypass the aforementioned check, it will be necessary to use Android’s biometric identification.

At this time, this feature is not active in beta versions of Androidbut tests carried out by a popular and very (deservedly) renowned leaker indicate that its development is already very advanced, so it can be expected that it will not be long in coming and in some beta version, either from a future Android 14 update or in the period before introducing Android 15. Be that as it may, and considering the propensity of many users to bypass processes that may take some time without thinking about the consequences of this, the implementation of a security measure like this is undoubtedly a great success.