Security is always an issue when it comes to the internet. There are many different websites and apps that can be accessed via our phones, but they also have security vulnerabilities that hackers may use for their own purposes like accessing personal information without permission or using up network bandwidth within an app’s permissions (such as sending messages). It would therefore make sense then if you had this concern of “What am I going to do?”
Security isn’t just about protecting yourself–it’s much more significant because somebody else might try something on your device too. If you have a device that runs on the Android operating system, however, there are some features of Google Play Protect that can be used against malicious software.
What is Google Play Protect?
It’s an application verification service that makes sure you’re going to download something from a trusted source, and it also allows users to report any suspicious apps that they may find online. This helps out greatly with what app developers can do for their consumers–you don’t want a malicious app to get on a store like Google Play for someone else to find! Now let’s talk about how this concept works in practice.
Firstly, whenever you try to download an app from Google Play, you’ll notice there will be some information below the rating of the app regarding what Google Play Protect has done to make sure everything is okay. If it says “Google Play Protect has checked this phone and your device doesn’t have any
This layout for Google Play’s “Verified by Google” security system. malware installed,” you’re good to go! However, if it reads something like “This type of file can harm your device,” then there might be some suspicious activity going on with the app leading to a warning from Google. It will also say how many times that app has been downloaded–if it’s anything other than zero, you should probably look elsewhere unless you want issues with privacy and security. The screenshots below show off exactly what I’m talking about:
Secondly, this is part of a weird trend going on in the Google Play Store. It seems that a lot of these apps are targeting Chinese users, and yet they have English versions available to download. Even though this is not an issue inherently bad with the app itself, it may be worth taking into consideration before you install any of them. I’ve only experienced this with two China-targeted apps, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind if you see more like it popping up next time you’re browsing through your list of the installed app–you might end up with some trouble down the road if Google flags those as harmful because they try to pull information or push ads which could potentially contain malware or other annoyances.
Thirdly, be wary of ads that pop-up without permission. If you’ve already downloaded the app, it may be difficult to block this nuisance until Google gets some more sophisticated algorithms developed in order to detect these kinds of apps–it’s still pretty new for them, so I wouldn’t worry too much about downloading malicious ads for now.