After receiving a notification from the Gurugram Police, Google removed two phony applications connected to investing from the Android Play Store, according to IANS. The FHT and SS-Equitrade applications were taken down after the district's police investigated and took legal action against them for cybercrime. In a recent report, Google stated that it will be removing 2 million applications from the Play Store by the year 2023.

The Station House Officer (SHO) of the cybercrime police station in Gurugram, Naveen, claims that cybercriminals exploited these applications to trick customers by promising them large returns on their investments. According to investigations, almost 1.55 lakh individuals have downloaded the FHT app alone. Naveen cautioned the public that anybody may become a victim of cyber fraud and advised them not to transmit money for investments unless they had done extensive investigation and obtained all relevant information.

This action takes place in the context of Google's stepped-up efforts to protect the integrity of the Play Store. Google recently revealed that, compared to the 1.43 million applications it blocked in 2022, it has stopped the publishing of 2.28 million apps on the Play Store in 2023. The business also said that it has removed 333,000 developer accounts from the Android app store that may have been malicious.

Google said that almost 200,000 app submissions were either rejected or remediated to guarantee correct use of critical rights, such background location or SMS access, in a blog post outlining its steps to improve user privacy and security. Additionally, Google strengthened privacy safeguards across more than 31 Software Development Kits (SDKs) by working with SDK providers to restrict access to sensitive data and sharing, which affected over 790,000 apps.

Nearly 200,000 app submissions were also either rejected or remediated to guarantee that important rights, including SMS access or background location, were used appropriately. We worked with SDK providers to limit sensitive data access and sharing, strengthening privacy safeguards for over 31 SDKs impacting over 790,000 applications, in an effort to better protect user privacy on a broad scale, according to the blog post.

Google's proactive stance demonstrates its dedication to protecting users from dishonest and harmful activity on its network. The Play Store's secure and reliable environment is a priority for the firm, as seen by the elimination of several fraudulent investing applications.