Sometimes we forget just how many people out there are looking to steal something from us. Sometimes they steal stuff we don’t even realise is valuable and we think nothing of it. Most Zimbos don’t care about their data being stolen for example.
Because of this, we have terrible habits on the internet. This explains why security experts in the country tell us that many, if not most, of our big enterprises are attacked regularly. Embarassingly, many of the cyber attacks still come from employees clicking on suspicious links in their emails.
Fortunately, on our Android phones, Google is doing what it can to keep the worst of it off the Play Store. They say AI has been instrumental in that effort and I think the following numbers demonstrate that.
AI now assists in over 92% of Google’s human reviews of potentially harmful apps, enabling faster and more accurate decisions. However, we know that AI is still not flawless and so I imagine that some of you who have had your apps rejected for dubious reasons can thank AI for that.
Google also blocked 2.36 million apps that violated their policies and banned 158,000 developer accounts trying to distribute harmful apps. So, if even 1% of these apps were mistakenly blocked, that’s 23,600.
Since most of us aren’t developers trying to get our apps on the Play Store, I think we can live with the AI being overzealous and blocking some benign apps if it means we get less harmful stuff on our app store.
Finally, Google Play Protect scans apps 200 billion times daily, using sophisticated code analysis to catch new threats like polymorphic malware. [Polymorphic malware is malicious software that can change its code, appearance, or behaviour to evade detection by traditional antivirus and security systems.]
So, this means if you don’t know what you’re doing, please stick to apps listed on the Play Store. If you’re out there clicking on bad links in emails, you have no business getting apps via ShareIt and installing them on your phone.
