Google reveals how dangerous installing an Android app outside of the Play Store can be. If anyone still doubted it, the figure put forward should convince the skeptics.
In theory, the Google Play Store contains all the apps you could need for your Android smartphone. However, sometimes it's impossible to find what you're looking for. You then look towards other sources in the hope of finding the .apk file (the equivalent of Windows' .exe) that will meet your expectations. As you are cautious, you know that this is the main way that hackers infect mobile devices. Which doesn't mean that this is systematically the case, of course.
There are completely legitimate sources like the APKMirror site, to name just one, but let's not kid ourselves: navigating the murky waters of applications available outside the Play Store is generally perilous. We repeat this quite often, in fact. But do you know to what extent? In a post on the Android Developers Blog, Google's teams clearly answer the question, and the answer is chilling.
Here's how dangerous it is to install an Android app outside the Play Store
An app downloaded from an external source is 50 times more likely to contain malware than one downloaded from the Play Store. This is what Google's most recent analysis reveals. Note that we're talking about probability, which rightly implies that an app from the Play Store can also be infected with malware. This figure allows the Mountain View firm to bounce back on the effectiveness of the protections provided by its Android store.
Read also – Android: the Play Store now warns about the quality of applications
Thus, 2.36 million suspicious applications were ultimately not published on the Play Store thanks in particular to the threat detection system based on artificial intelligence. Other measures will be put in place to strengthen security of the platform, for example to better identify infected apps pretending to be finance-related programs. No deployment date has been announced yet.
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