A quarter of the apps removed from the Play Store violated our privacy policy

Up to 25% of apps removed from store Google Play in the first half of the year it did not follow the principles of privacy protection. For apps removed from store App Store it was almost 60%. The information was provided by the portal 9to5Mac.

Applications that do not comply with privacy rules can be a serious security risk

The survey was conducted by Pixalate, a leading fraud protection platform. Her report H1 2021 Delisted Apps Report contains reports on mobile apps removed from Google Play and the Apple App Store. It should help developers and advertisers identify potential threats to privacy violations.

In the first half of the year, Pixalate analyzed more than 5 million mobile applications in application stores. It found that more than 813,000 of them, more than 15%, had been removed in the first half of 2021. More than 9 billion apps were downloaded to the Google Play Store before they were removed.

Removing apps can be caused by a variety of factors, including violating app store policies or terminating a developer account. Apps can remain installed on your device even after being removed from the app store. If an application has been removed due to a trade policy violation, it could pose a serious security risk to the user.

What were the results of the Pixalate survey?

• In the first half of 2021, more than 813,000 applications were removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Prior to removal, Apple downloaded 9.3 billion downloads and 21.8 million Apple applications.
• COPPA risks: 86% (Google) and 89% (Apple) of removed apps targeted children 12 years of age and younger.
• 25% by Google and 59% of applications removed by Apple did not comply with any privacy policies.
• 26% of removed Google Play apps from Russia did not comply with any privacy policies. In the App Store, 60% of removed apps from China did not comply with any privacy policies.
• 66% of removed Google applications used at least one potentially “unsafe permission.” As many as 27% of them had access to GPS coordinates and 19% had access to the camera.