Google bans 173k developer accounts to prevent malware operations, fraud

In order to prevent malware operations and fraud rings from infecting Android users' devices with fraudulent apps, Google claims that has banned 173,000 developer accounts in 2022.

In its "bad apps" yearly report, the company acknowledged that it also stopped about 1.5 million apps associated with various policy infractions from being released on the Google Play Store.

Additionally, the Google Play Commerce security team stopped transactions that were abusive and fraudulent and could have cost the company more than $2 billion.

"In 2022, we prevented 1.43 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play in part due to new and improved security features and policy enhancements — in combination with our continuous investments in machine learning systems and app review processes," the Google Security team said.

"We also continued to combat malicious developers and fraud rings, banning 173K bad accounts, and preventing over $2 billion in fraudulent and abusive transactions."

Google has added extra criteria, such as identification verification by phone and email, for developers wishing to join the Play Store ecosystem. As a result, fewer accounts were being utilized to distribute apps that broke Google Play's rules. 

Source