Recently, the Google Play Store got a reputation for hosting a good number of dangerous and malicious apps. There have been several instances where apps remained undetected for extended periods in the app store. While Google is actively working to make Play Store safe, the real danger mainly comes from sideloading apps. Well, Google Play Protect will be offering a solution in this regard.
The thing is, sideloaded apps bypass the Google Play Store protections when you install them. This means that your device is more vulnerable to sideloaded apps than the apps from the Play Store. Now, Google has decided to focus on this factor of Android apps by revamping Google Play Protect.
Google Play Protect Will Soon Keep Your Device Safe from Attackers
For those unaware, Google Play Protect is a built-in security feature that actively scans the apps you download from the Play Store. But till now, the robust protection features only worked for the apps from Google’s app store. While it did scan the sideloaded apps, the protection feature wasn’t that advanced for the sideloaded apps.
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But with the latest safeguards, Google Play Protect will extract the important signals from all the apps installed on your phone. After extraction, it will send them to the backend infrastructure. That will initiate a code-level evaluation in real time. This evaluation will determine if the app is actually safe or if it’s malicious.
In other words, when you sideload an app, Google Play Protect will do a code-level inspection before the installation. This will “help better protect users against malicious polymorphic apps that leverage various methods, such as AI, to be altered to avoid detection,” Google said.
The new version of Play Protect will first launch in India. Later on, Google will expand it to the rest of the world in the following months.
