Over 1.5 million currently available in the official iOS and Android app stores.abandoned apps” has not been updated for two years or more. This is what the survey conducted by Pixalate for the first quarter of 2022 and published last Thursday (5) shows.
of this total legacy appsabout 869 thousand Google Play store and about 650 thousand people app store, according to the company responsible for the research. Among them, games are the category most likely to be forgotten by developers, with no 50,000 title updates in the last two years, followed by educational apps.
On the other hand, financial applications These are the most likely to be upgraded, as 69,000 of them have been upgraded in the last six months. A similar path is followed shopping and health appswhich attracts more attention from those responsible.
The survey also showed that some software in app stores is in an even worse case of abandonment. About 314,000 apps were last updated over five years ago; 184,000 of these were on the Apple platform and 130,000 were in the search giant Google’s store.
security risks
large amount apps haven’t been updated for two years or more Currently available in the Android and iOS stores, which represents 30% of the software available for download, this raises concerns about user safety. Gaps in legacy programs can be abused by cybercriminals, making it easy to steal data and monitor the device.
Recently, Apple announced that it would remove old apps from its virtual store, while choosing to “hide” abandoned programs in the Google Play Store, and this measure will come into effect later this year. Either way, it’s worth checking an app’s update information before downloading it.
Source: Tec Mundo
