Verify Apps: Protection against Potentially Harmful Apps (Google Android Security)

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Source: Why Android malware scares are almost never as bad as they seem
On Android, it's split between the OS and Play Services.

Google Play Services is a system-level app, which is updated in the background by Google on every Android phone going back to 2010's Gingerbread release. As well as providing APIs that let developers interact with Google services, and porting many features back to older versions of Android, Play Services has an important role in Android security.

Google Android Security: Shielding you from Potentially Harmful Applications
Earlier this month, we shared an overview of the ways we keep you safe, on Google and on the web, more broadly. Today, we wanted to specifically focus on one element of Android security—Potentially Harmful Applications—highlighting fraudsters’ common tactics, and how we shield you from these threats.

“Potentially Harmful Applications,” or PHAs, are Android applications that could harm you or your device, or do something unintended with the data on your device. Some examples of PHA badness include:

• Backdoors: Apps that let hackers control your device, giving them unauthorized access to your data.
  
• Billing fraud: Apps that charge you in an intentionally misleading way, like premium SMS scams or call scams.
  
• Spyware: Apps that collect personal information from your device without consent
  
• Hostile Downloads: Apps that download harmful programs, often through bundling with another program
  
• Trojan Apps: Apps that appear benign (e.g., a game that claims only to be a game) but actually perform undesirable actions.

Verify Apps is a cloud-based service that proactively checks every application prior to install to determine if the application is potentially harmful, and subsequently rechecks devices regularly to help ensure they’re safe. Verify Apps checks more than 6 billion installed applications and scans around 400 million devices per day. If Verify Apps detects a PHA before you install it or on your device if, it will prompt you to remove the app immediately.

Sometimes, Verify Apps will remove an application without requiring you to confirm the removal. This is an action we’ll take very rarely, but if a PHA is purely harmful, has no possible benefit to users, or is impossible for you to remove on your own, we’ll zap it automatically.

More Information at Source: Shielding you from Potentially Harmful Applications
Related: Ransomware Protection in Android Nougat (Google Android Security)

 

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More information about Potential Harmful Apps; Android Security.

• Feb'17 Blog: Shielding you from Potentially Harmful Applications
• Support: Protect against harmful apps - Accounts Help
• Documentation: PDF: Potentially Harmful Apps classifications