Fewer bad actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, the company says, a change the tech giant credits to its increased investment in proactive security systems and AI technology.
In his last Android App Ecosystem Security Report released Thursday, Google said it blocked 1.75 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in 2025, down from 2.36 million in 2024 and 2.28 million in 2023.
The annual report offers a look at how Google keeps Android users safe by reviewing and monitoring apps to protect against malware, financial fraud, privacy intrusions, sneaky subscriptions and other threats.
For example, Google says it banned more than 80,000 developer accounts in 2025 that had tried to publish these types of bad apps. That number is also down year-over-year from 158,000 in 2024 and 333,000 in 2023.
Google cited how its investments in artificial intelligence and other real-time defenses helped combat these types of threats, but also how they served as deterrents.
“Initiatives like developer verification, mandatory preview checks, and testing requirements have raised the bar for the Google Play ecosystem, significantly reducing entry paths for bad actors,” the company’s blog post explains, adding that “multi-layered protection with artificial intelligence” has “deterred bad actors from publishing malicious apps.”
Google noted that it now runs over 10,000 security checks on every app it publishes, and continues to recheck apps after they’re published. The company has also incorporated the latest AI models into its app review process, which has helped human reviewers find more complex malicious patterns faster. Google said it plans to increase its investment in artificial intelligence in 2026 to stay ahead of emerging threats.
In addition, Google said it prevented more than 255,000 apps from gaining excessive access to sensitive user data, a number lower than 1.3 million in 2024. The company also blocked 160 million spam ratings and reviews last year and prevented an average rating drop of 0.5 stars for apps targeting revisionist bombing.
Meanwhile, Android’s defense system, known as Google Play Protect, detected more than 27 million new malicious apps and warned users or blocked the app from running. This is an increase from the 13 million non-Play Store apps detected in 2024 and five million in 2023. These increases seem to indicate that bad actors are now more often avoiding the Play Store when targeting users with their malicious apps.
