Google this week announced a new set of Play policy updates to strengthen user privacy and protect businesses against fraud, even as it revealed it blocked or removed over 8.3 billion ads globally and suspended 24.9 million accounts in 2025.
The new policy updates relate to contact and location permissions in Android, allowing third-party apps to access the contact lists and a user’s location in a more privacy-friendly manner. This includes a new Contact Picker, which offers a standardized, secure, and searchable interface for contact selection.
“This feature allows users to grant apps access only to the specific contacts they choose, aligning with Android’s commitment to data transparency and minimized permission footprints,” Google said.
The changes to the Android ecosystem come as Google said it’s harnessing the capabilities of Gemini, its artificial intelligence (AI) model, to detect and block malicious ads on its platform. More than 99% of policy-violating ads were caught by its systems in 2025 before they were shown to users.
“Bad actors are using generative AI to create deceptive ads at scale, and Gemini helps us detect and block them in real time,” Google said.
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