You need to stick to Google Play for apps and run as recent a version of Android as possible if you want to lower your risk of ending up in the crosshairs of malware-touting miscreants, according to the findings in a report from none other than Google.<\/p>\n
While you were unlikely to fall off your chair at reading this, it\u2019s still worth examining the underlying data, as available in the company\u2019s all-new\u00a0Android Ecosystem Security Transparency Report.<\/p>\n
Google says that 0.09%\u00a0of Android-powered devices that installed apps only from the official app repository in 2017 were compromised with at least one Potentially Harmful Application (PHA), which is\u00a0Google\u2019s term for mobile malware.<\/p>\n
This share dropped further, to 0.08%, in the first three quarters of 2018. With Android\u2019s 2-billion user base, this still amounts to 1.6 million devices.<\/p>\n
At any rate, the devices that installed apps from\u00a0outside\u00a0the official Android storefront were far more likely to \u201ccontract\u201d a PHA \u2013 0.82% in 2017 and 0.68% in the first nine months of 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndroid devices that only download apps from Google Play are 9 times less likely to get a PHA than devices that download apps from other sources,\u201d reads Google\u2019s own summation.<\/p>\n
The report covers \u201chow often a routine, full-device scan by\u00a0Google Play Protect\u00a0detects a device with PHAs installed\u201d. Built into every Android device, Google Play Protect \u201cscans over 50 billion apps daily from inside and outside of Google Play\u201d,\u00a0says the tech behemoth.<\/p>\n
Out with the old, in with the new?<\/p>\n
Another key finding to emanate from the report is that, for all intents and purposes, the newer your Android version is the likelier you are to\u00a0avoid being compromised by malware. This has been the case especially since Android Lollipop (5.x) was launched back in November 2014, with the PHA rate falling consistently from 0.66% for that version to 0.06% for Pie (9.x), released in August 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cNewer versions of Android are less affected by PHAs. We attribute this to many factors, such as continued platform and API hardening, ongoing security updates and app security and developer training to reduce apps\u2019 access to sensitive data,\u201d reads the report.<\/p>\n
To put things into perspective, however, the share of devices running one of Android\u2019s latest two versions \u2013 Oreo (8.x) and Pie \u2013 remains low, as shown by\u00a0Google\u2019s own data\u00a0as of October 26, 2018. In fact, on the distribution of less than 0.1%, Pie has yet to get a piece of that pie (chart).<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, nearly one in every three Android-powered devices run either Lollipop or one of the platform\u2019s even older versions.<\/p>\n
This, of course, has to be considered (among other things) against the backdrop of the glacial pace at which many mobile phone manufacturers deliver\u00a0software updates to Android users\u00a0\u2013 provided that they deliver them at all, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You need to stick to Google Play for apps and run as recent a version of Android as possible if you want to lower your risk of ending up in the crosshairs of malware-touting miscreants, according to the findings in a report from none other than Google. While you were unlikely to fall off your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"1","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_pr_autopilot_social_copy":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph_description":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph_image":"","_yoast_wpseo_opengraph_image_id":0,"_yoast_wpseo_twitter_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter_description":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter_image":"","_yoast_wpseo_twitter_image_id":0,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":439,"_extra_hide_author_box":"1","_extra_featured_post":"","_partner_post_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[439],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n