Google is always on the move when it comes to security. It is something that makes complete sense when you have some of the largest platforms today, one of them being very “sensitive” for the user. We refer to the Play Store, the store from which we download applications and where our bank details are.
As every year, the company has detailed its key objectives for the next few months. They discuss how they will evolve their policies to adapt to the needs that arise and how they will make us more secure on the platform. In fact, most of the points revolve around that: protect the user from potential abuse.
More control over your data
Little by little, we are all becoming more and more clear that privacy is a key issue in our day to day. We are very exposed, whether we know it or notand you have to take certain active measures to be safer.
From Google they have commented that it is difficult to keep up to date in terms of privacy and security taking into account the pace at which everything is progressing, but that their new policies will try to give more information to the user so that they are more aware and take an active part in that protection. of privacy.
That is where the intent for transparency of the Play Store. These last few months they implemented a system that allowed the user to see if an application was collecting data and what was done with it. It’s a great idea, but it’s not quite well implemented.
What we see in the Play Store against what appears in the application policy.
There were apps on the Play Store that said they didn’t collect data, but if you navigated to that app’s data policy, you could see that they did, they didn’t just collect data, they used it as a bargaining chip.
For this reason, one of Google’s objectives for this year is to add new policies that provide clarity about the data collected by the applications and give us more control in the elimination of them.
Besides, the permissions of the applications will continue to be deepened (for example, that little window that appears in some applications when you want to access the photos). In the latest versions of Android we could give permission to the entire gallery or only to selected photos and with Android 14 these privacy options will continue to be deepened.
Protect applications and give more information to the user
On the other hand, Google has detailed its plan so that Store applications are more protected against attacks, providing tools to developers to prevent abuse. With the new APIs launched by the company, and according to data from the company, developers have seen a 50% reduction in unauthorized access.
And well, among other intentions, Google has commented that wants the Play Store experience to be safe for developers and usersincluding minors, so it will continue to fight for companies to better detail their applications and collect only the data necessary for them to work.
Here they have a complicated task considering the amount of unnecessary data to function that some applications collect, but hey.
More information | Android Developers