Google is rolling out a new extension to its Verify apps service to check on the functioning of apps on Android devices.
Though there are security checks and filters through which every app entering Google Play has to pass, there are chances that the apps change the way they function after the user installs them. Also, a considerable percent of apps are installed from third-party websites rather than from Google Play.
There are security features like Verify apps and Bouncer that have successfully filtered malicious apps and this new feature is going be an extension of the Verify apps feature that would frequently check on the apps that are active on your Android device and ensure they are not performing undesired acts in the background.
When an app is installed from a third party website, Google’s security feature assumes that all the terms and conditions are agreed to by the user and hence no preventive action will be taken for anything the app does unless flagged, which happens rarely.
Rich Cannings, an Android security engineer at Google wrote on a blog post, “Because potentially harmful applications are very rare, most people will never see a warning or any other indication that they have this additional layer of protection. But we do expect a small number of people to see warnings (which look similar to the existing Verify apps warnings) as a result of this new capability.”
Besides malicious apps, there are also apps that users pay for only to find later that they don’t keep up to the promise that they make before installation. As these types of apps cannot be categorized as malware, it largely depends on users’ discernment to identify such apps before installation.
This feature is available for all devices that run on Android 2.3 or above.
