Google is pushing to provide a safe and secure experience to Android users

Google is looking to improve user experience for Android users by making changes to its apps permissions. It is pushing to make Android the most secure mobile operating system and provide a safe and secure experience to users. The search engine giant is cracking down on Android apps which ask for access to user’s personal data.

After a recent change in its apps permission policy, 98% of Android apps will not ask for access to user’s SMS and call data.

This comes after the introduction of a 2018 policy which aimed to ensure user data privacy and security by limiting apps that were unnecessarily seeking permission to personal information.

Now, there will only be a few applications which will require access to call logs and SMS’s to perform their core tasks.

Google recently revealed that it has blocked over 790,000 possibly malicious applications from being published on the Play Store, with ‘tens of thousands of apps’ removed or updated.

A policy update in 2019 also targeted towards segregating apps that were kids and family-friendly.

Although, all these steps have not prevented dodgy Android apps, quite a number of them, to slip through to the apps store.

Last year a popular app called CamScanner came with an update that allowed hackers to install a trojan on the devices.

Another investigation found over 1300 apps found to be able to access user data even when they were explicitly denied the permission to do so.

While Google’s aim of making Android as safe as iOS may still be a way off, these attempts appear to have helped educate app developers, who have started to respect user privacy by not attempting to collect user data unless specifically required.