Alphabet Inc’s subsidiary Google has offered a review of its Android Security report for the year 2018 in which it stated that only 0.08% of devices that used Google Play as a downloading platform exclusively were affected by Potentially Harmful Applications (PHAs).
The Android security report also states that out of those devices which installed apps from other sources outside Google play store only 0.68% were affected by PHAs which is 8 times higher than those downloading apps from Google Play.
FYI, from the year 2016, Google has started scanning all apps which are being downloaded onto the devices using its Google Play Protect software. And the scanning tool operates irrespective of the source from which the apps have been downloaded.
Android Security report states that the ‘Play Protect’ software scans over 50 billion apps on a daily note across more than 1.6 billion devices.
While technically dissecting the PHA install rates from Google Play; it has to be notified that there has been an increase from 0.02% in 2017 to 0.04% in 2018. However, the rise was witnessed due to the fact that the attribute Click Fraud was included in the PHA collection for the 1st time. The report also specifies that Google Play Protect protected over 1.3 billion devices from installing PHAs from outside the Play store in 2018.
Coming to the percentage of devices which installed PHAs- Android OS version wise
Lollipop- 0.65%
Marshmallow- 0.55%
Nougat- 0.29%
Oreo- 0.19%
Pie- 0.18%
Security experts suggests that Apple iOS platform is far better when it comes to offering secure apps for download as it offers software updates from time to time, which improve the device security on a significant note.
However, Google claims that it is doing everything to reach to the expectation of Android users when it comes to security and stressed on the fact that it annually pays $3 million through rewards program to offer encouragement to the security researchers from around the world to improve Android Security.
