Security on Android is, as we’ve been counting for a while, one of Google’s priorities. And that’s because due to the operating model of the app store, especially in the early years, malware was at home in the software store that Google wanted to build Apple with its iOS App Store. A model that is too lax compared to a model that is too restrictive, seen from the center.

But as I said, for years Google has decided to go to work to “secure” its business, add more and more filters and measures designed both to analyze new applications uploaded by developers and to check those already available and their updates. And it’s a fairly common technique to upload a clean app to the Google Play Store that passes filters, but use updates to introduce some malicious element, either in your own code or by downloading the data part once. the application is already installed on the device.

Be that as it may, the result is that Google is constantly detecting and eliminating applications that prove to be malicious, and as we can read on Yahoo!, has recently struck again in this regard, with more than 12 apps removed from Google Play. Removed content ranges from a weather app to a Muslim prayer app and a QR code reader. Some of these applications had more than 10 million downloads, so their distribution is relatively high.

The common denominator of all this software removed from the Google Play Store is was dedicated to the incognito collection of information about the user and his contacts: locations, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc., which are later sent to the persons responsible for these applications, who use them for a variety of purposes, from phishing campaigns to their sale on the black market, in large databases.

However, This does not mean that applications are denied access to this type of information., as there are cases where they need to perform their functions. Therefore, in this type of action, Google emphasizes that the user must be fully informed of both the information obtained by the application and the use that will be provided to it. In this regard, Google stated in December 2021 that applications that did not comply with its data policy could be banned from the Play Store.