AV-TEST examined the quality of 15 antivirus for Android over a six-month period (January-June 2021), highlighting that the only positive feature of Google Play Protect it's the performance. The service built into the Play Store does not offer adequate protection and it is the worst also with regard to false positives. Users should therefore install a more effective antivirus.
Google Play Protect: protezione zero
There are over 3 billion Android devices in the world, so it's clear why Google's operating system has become a favorite target of attackers. Among other things, unlike computers, smartphones are practically always on and connected to the Internet. You must therefore use a good one antivirus. According to the results obtained by AV-TEST, the integrated solution in the Play Store does not offer sufficient protection.
The tests were carried out between January and June 2021, considering nearly 20.000 apps containing malware (recent and discovered in the last four weeks). AV-TEST awarded up to 6 points for each category (protection, performance and usability). The maximum score (18 points) was obtained by 9 out of 15 antivirus. All infected apps (100%) were detected by 5 antivirus: Bitdefender, G DATA, McAfee, NortonLifeLock and Trend Micro. The percentage is similar (99,9 or 99,8%) for 6 other software.
Google Play Protect it ranks last with much lower percentages (between 68,8 and 76,6%). The service is always active, so it scans the apps on your device and downloaded from the store. However, AV-TEST found that Play Protect considered over 70 "clean" apps to be infected, so it did not pass the test on false positives. For this reason, users should install a better antivirus.
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