Google Play Wants To Make Sure You ‘Download Apps, Not Traps’
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Summary
- Google emphasizes its ongoing efforts to maintain a safe Play Store, highlighting Play Protect’s real-time safety checks and the blocking of millions of harmful apps and developer accounts.
- The article details six key features designed to protect users, including rigorous app safety checks, transparent data safety sections, secure payment options, robust parental controls, app verification badges, and user control over Play data.
- Google is launching a new ad campaign in the US, centered around the message “download apps not traps,” to further raise awareness about safe app downloads on the Play Store.
Over the years, Google has done a good enough job at ensuring that its Play Store is a safe and secure place to download apps. Although the occasional bad actors slip through, Google’s measures generally maintain a trustworthy environment for users looking to discover and install new apps.
On the user-facing end, this is primarily achieved by the tech giant’s Play Protect, which essentially runs a safety check on apps on the Play Store before you install them. The tool is enabled by default, and can also scan your device for harmful apps after they’ve been downloaded and installed.
Last year alone, Google blocked more than 2.36 million apps and over 158,000 developer accounts to ensure the Play Store’s safety, and now it is reiterating how it does so, complete with a new ad campaign centered on the Play Store enabling users to “download apps not traps.”
Related
In a new blog post, the tech giant highlighted six key mechanisms that work around the clock to ensure a safe Play Store environment.
Several safety checks
Google says that each and every app listed on the Play Store goes through over 10,000 safety checks. These checks happen before an app is listed, and before said apps are updated.
Source: Google
Data safety insights
In-depth data-safety sections, visible on each app’s listing, help users make informed decisions about how an app collects, shares and protects your data. The section highlights whether said app shares data with third-party apps, if it collects location, message, financial info, app activity, and related data, whether the data it collects is encrypted or not, among other data-safety metrics. “By reviewing Data safety sections, you can make more informed decisions about what apps you use,” wrote Google.
Source: Google
Secure payments
The tech giant highlighted its purchase verification feature, which essentially requires users to authenticate with their PIN, pattern, password, or biometrics to ensure that the app, subscription, or in-app/game item your account is attempting to purchase is indeed authorized.
Robust parental controls
Google’s suite of parental controls ensures that kids can’t get their hands on digital content that might not be suitable for their age, and that also includes apps available on the Play Store. Additionally, it ensures that apps targeted at children meet additional requirements “concerning its content and handling of personal information.”
App badges and control over your Play data
Source: Google
The Google Play Store offers dedicated badges for specific app categories, meant to offer users an extra layer of verification to identify high-quality and trustworthy apps. “Our ‘Government’ badge can help you identify official government apps and our ‘Verified’ badge recognizes consumer VPN apps that go above and beyond to protect their users,” wrote Google while citing examples.
Similarly, users have full control over the Play Store’s app recommendation process, allowing you to either disable the personalized store results and recommendations, or fine tune them by telling the app not to use data associated with a particular app.
Elsewhere, the tech giant also debuted a new ad campaign that essentially raises awareness about safer app downloads. You can see one of the first ads from the campaign below.
