Google has developed a new machine learning algorithm for mobile apps in the Play Store to help prevent intrusive apps gets access to your personal data. Mobile apps generally need some permission to work on your smartphone, But certain apps could also extract more data from devices and send them to the app maker.This may lead to serious problem in future.
To protect users Google analyzes privacy for each app in Google Play store by comparing with other similar apps with similar features known as functional peers.This peer group helps to calibrate the expectations of users and set limits of apps that may be intrusive to the users.
This method detect apps that collect or send sensitive data without proper permission and makes it easier for users to find apps that provide better functionality. Certain apps in Google play store requires few permissions like a photography app needs camera permission and Location permission.
If the same app asks for permission like reading contacts, modify contacts, send SMS then it is said to be intrusive or unsafe app. The user has to uninstall the existing app or better never install those type of apps.
It is simple to create a peer group. It is to create a fixed set of categories and then assign each app into respective categories, such as social, photography, tools, productivity, and games based on app meta data, text descriptions, and user metrics. The problem is these fixed categories are inflexible to track the mobile apps. So Manual verification should be maintained which is tedious to do.This also helps app developers to build the safest app in the unsafe environment.
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Source: Google
