Nearly 10 million Android devices have Potentially Harmful Apps says Annual Android security report

According to the latest Android annual security report, more than 735 million devices from over 200 manufacturers have received platform security updates in 2016. The annual Android security report looks at data on Potentially Harmful Apps (PHAs) across Android devices. It also explains how the OS checks apps for unsafe behaviour and provide statistics on the state of software updates for Android devices.If you are an Android user, you would know that Google releases monthly Android security updates and has been doing so for devices running Android 4.4.4 and up.While half of devices at the end of 2016 did not receive a platform security update last year, the security team is working to update and streamline the program so that it is easier for manufacturers to push security updates.The team also revealed that Android's 'Verify Apps' feature conducted 750 million daily checks last year which is a significant update from 450 million the year before. The report also mentioned that the percentage of devices with PHAs went up in 2016 however the overall number was still low.About 0.71 percent of all Android devices had PHAs installed at the end of 2016, which was 0.5 percent in the beginning of 2015. This means that out of the total 1.4 billion Android users nearly 10 million devices have potentially harmful applications installed.