As an ever growing alternative app store, here at Aptoide, we strive to continuously provide our users with the best, most diverse apps on the market! Of course, this means that safety is one of our main concerns. After all, the fact that Aptoide is an open social platform with user generated content, means that we have to be extra careful when it comes to security measures!

With that being said, our anti-malware system is constantly scanning and filtering the content on the Aptoide store making sure our users are presented with information regarding the safety of the app that they are trying to download. Anti-virus systems and Malware Engines that analyzes app behavior, are just a few steps that each app has to go through before it is actually ready to be downloaded and installed on your device!

And it doesn't stop there, there is a rescanning scheme that ensures that an app is scanned at least 3 times within 48 hours of its upload, at least 4 times within a week and at least 5 times within a month. These apps then continue to be rescanned, again and again, even if they've been in the stores for years.

So, how can our users know if the apps that they want to download tick all of the safety boxes or not? Easy, simply take a look at what the app badge says. Intrigued? Keep reading.

The badge system we created offers 3 different types of badges: the Trusted Badge, the Warning Badge, and the Unknown Badge. These badges go through a number of steps until they are approved, or not, by our security system Sentinel. Again, it is important to point out that all of the apps at Aptoide are rescanned several times, to make sure that they are safe to be used by our users.

You can find out more about the security system scanning steps and how they work by reading this blog post.

In the meanwhile, this is what each one of our Badges indicates:

Trusted Badge - The trusted badge means that the status of the app is 100% safe. In other words, it means that our team has scanned the app and it is clear of any malware!

Warning Badge - Every app has a unique signature generated by its developer and, whenever you see a Warning Badge, it means that the author isn't the official one. Just because the signatures don't match it doesn't mean that the app is not safe. In fact, the Warning Badge guarantees the app has no viruses ;)

Unknown Badge - When you see an Unknown badge know that the app still hasn’t been scanned. Once it is, and in case we detect malware in it, the app will be instantly removed and it won't be available to download.

There you have it! Next time you think about downloading an app on the Aptoide app store, don't forget to check our trustworthy safety badge system!