Google defends that its AI systems helped protect the Play Store from more than 1 million malicious apps in 2025

Google has defended that during 2025 it has prevented the publication of more than 1.75 million apps violating policies from the Play Store, as well as the blocking of more than 80,000 accounts from malicious developers.

The company has shared its report on the security of the Android application ecosystem, in which it explains how it reviews and monitors Play Store applications to protect it from malicious ‘apps’ and another series of cyberattacks.

The 2025 results reveal that Google has prevented the publication of 1.75 million applications that did not follow policies, has “banned” 80,000 accounts of “malicious” developers and has stopped the “excessive” access to sensitive user data to 255,000 applications.

Additionally, Google has blocked 160 million reviews and ratings of applications identified as ‘spam’ or fraudulent, avoiding an average drop of 0.5 stars for ‘apps’ in the Play Store.

“These numbers demonstrate how our proactive protections and our push for a more responsible ecosystem are deterring malicious actors from publishing apps while our new tools make it easier for honest developers to create compliant apps,” Google explained in a post on its security blog.

In this line, the company has highlighted the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in detecting malicious applications. In 2025, Google integrated new generative AI models into the review process to help the human team find complex threats more quickly.

Google has announced that its main priority continues to be turning Google Play and Android into “the most reliable application ecosystems”and to this end it has anticipated that it will continue investing in AI-based defense systems to prevent threats and help developers create secure applications.

GOOGLE PLAY PROTECT EXPANSION

The security solution Google Play Protect identifies applications that are a threat and notifies users about them. During 2025, it identified more than 27 million malicious applications external from the Play Store.

Currently, this function analyzes more than 350 billion Android apps every day and Google has indicated that the feature has been extended to scam calls to protect users.

“Following the success of our initial pilot in Singapore, we are expanding enhanced fraud protection to 185 markets, now covering more than 2.8 billion Android devices,” the company explained.