Google and Apple delisted more than eight lakh apps from their app stores in the first half of this year. Before these apps were delisted, they were downloaded nine billion times from the Google Play Store. The apps on Apple’s App Store had more than 21 million user ratings, according to California-based Pixalate, which detects and reports fraudulent advertising activity.

According to the report, 86 percent of the mobile apps delisted from the Google Play Store and 89 percent from the Apple App Store were targeted at children up to 12 years old. It was also noticed that 25 percent of the Play Store apps and 59 percent of the App Store apps had no privacy policy. The report further said that 26 percent of the apps were delisted from the Russian Google Play Store and 60 percent of the apps listed on China’s App Store had no detectable privacy policy.

There were many reasons behind the delisting.

Around 66 percent of the delisted Google apps had at least one “dangerous permission.” These dangerous permissions, also called runtime permission, give an app access to restricted data and let them perform restricted actions that affect the system and performance of other apps. Around 27 percent of these delisted apps had access to GPS coordinates and 19 percent could access the camera.

The delisted apps will remain installed on a device even after they have been removed from the online stores, which is a major cause for concern for users and regulators.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)