Google: 80% of Android apps are using encrypted traffic by default

According to Google, as of October 2019, four-fifths (80%) of Android applications available for download through the official Play Store is using HTTPS to encrypt their respective network traffic. For apps on Android 9, the number is even higher, reaching 90%. This means that traffic entering or leaving one of these applications is encrypted and cannot be intercepted or read by third parties.

Google expects this number to rise in the coming years, mainly due to the company’s gradual rollout and implementation of a series of measures since 2016. It includes warnings in IDE tools and Google Play Developer Dashboard. It is reported that since 2017, Google has been pushing Android developers to integrate encrypted traffic into their applications in order to provide better security and privacy when applications communicate over the Internet or a network.

Starting with Android 7 in 2016, Google introduced a web security profile that allows app developers to choose not to use clear text when performing network communications. With Android 9 released in 2018, Google has taken further steps so that all apps targeting Android 9 or later will automatically use the default policy to prevent apps from using unencrypted traffic.

It’s worth mentioning that Google is much better than Apple in implementing HTTPS for application developers. A report published in June 2019 found that only one-third of iOS apps are using ATS, a technology used to encrypt web traffic for iOS apps.

Via: ZDNet