Google’s good idea for identifying trusted apps

With over 2.4 million apps on the Android Play Store, it can sometimes be difficult to know who you’re dealing with.

Combined with the fact that Android smartphones are by far the most popular in the world (three billion active devices worldwide compared to one billion iPhones), this makes the Play Store a very popular hunting ground for cybercriminals. Better late than never: a new feature will give us a better view of the app store.

A new badge confirming its legitimacy

Even if they sometimes lose their relevance (as in X, the late Twitter), badges generally remain a good way to confirm the legitimacy of certain participants on the network. In any case, this is the idea that Google has adopted for its Play Store: it will now display an icon followed by the word “Government” when an app is associated with a government agency.

This new feature not only appears in the form of apps you want to download, but also in the list of results to easily alert users that this is a reliable app and not a fake one aimed at recovering personal data.

To qualify for this badge, developers must (thankfully) go through a number of authentication steps. Among them we find in particular the obligation to link a state email address. Identity verification is apparently also included in the program, 9to5Google reports.

France among the first interested countries

This feature has been in testing for months and is rolling out to the Play Store in several countries: US, Germany, Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, UK and France.

Good news: Government filings have increased in recent years. Especially now that the national ID card, and soon the driver’s license, can be dematerialized in the France Identity app.