The Google team has decided to make a significant change to the way Google Play Protect works by automatically removing permissions granted to applications that are not used.
According to statistics, in fact, about 25% of applications are used only once, at the time of installation and then remain on the unused device and take up space. Except that in some cases, given the many permissions required by different apps during installation, even unused ones can pose significant long-term privacy and security risks.
Well, the Mountain View giant has decided that the time has come to address this problem and this will happen through an update of Google Play Protect, following which the permissions will be removed from the apps that have been unused for some time.
How do Google Play Protect work
According to what is learned from an email sent by the Google team to the developers of Android applications, Google Play Protect will automatically remove the permissions obtained from apps that have not been used for a certain period of time (until now, however, they were users having to remove them manually).
The new system, already implemented with the most recent versions of Google’s OS (Android 11 and 12), will now also work on devices based on an older version, i.e. Android 10 and earlier releases. Users have the option to manually choose which apps should keep the permissions already granted and will also be notified when Google Play Protect performs a reset.
Furthermore, developers can mark their app as protected by Google Play Protect and in that case, it will be excluded from the automatic permissions reset function (even if it is not used for a long time, the permissions provided at installation will remain. active).
If you want to check which permissions the various games and apps have activated (and maybe clean up), you can open the Google Play Store and tap the profile picture at the top, then tap Play Protect and enter the section dedicated to removing permissions.