Google works around the clock to not only improve their interests and those who work to develop their many platforms, but the interests of its users as well. The most recent attempt to discourage fraudulent developers from stealing other people’s work and calling it their own is the newly patented method developed by Google that intends to keep piracy-based applications off its Google Play Store. The patent was filed in July 2013 and published in February 2014.

The strategy Google employs is to check a database for each authorized app that has previously been uploaded by genuine software developers to Google Play. Next, new apps will be scanned and compared against the database to discover instances where the code or other assets may have been pirated from known authorized apps once they are submitted. Upon analyzation, a new app will get a rating based on similarity depending on the image and audio files, data files, and executable code it contains. Google will use a filtering process in order to protect itself from phony positive results.

The Google Play Store has several cheap imitation apps. For instance, performing a search for the wildly popular game – “Flappy Bird”, will give you a return with numerous games that vary from the original name and probably also contain stolen code from the exact same place.

Most savvy Android users can easily recognize a fake app, although some are not aware of them. Once in a while, an impostor is discovered that isn’t quite as noticeable as the others; these sneaky types are notorious for causing the most trouble. Innocently downloading a phony game or app that has malicious code can put your security at great risk as well as damage your device. Fortunately, Google understands how serious this risk is along with the audacity of stealing someone else’s work. They are taking great steps in order to prevent it from happening in the future.

Source: http://www.androidheadlines.com/2014/04/google-targets-app-piracy-newly-patented-method-detect-hijacked-software-assets.html