# Play Integrity explained

> What Google's Play Integrity verdicts mean, why apps ask for them, and why emulators fail the device check.

Apps ask Google whether the phone they run on can be trusted, and treat the answer as a signal about every account on it.

## What do basic, device and strong integrity mean?

They are the three verdicts Google gives an app that asks whether its phone can be trusted. Basic means Android passes basic checks that it hasn't been tampered with. Device means it is a genuine, Play Protect certified device. Strong adds a hardware-backed key that proves a locked bootloader and a security update from the last year. Snapchat, X and many other apps ask for them.

## Why apps ask

An app asks Google from the phone and gets back the verdicts the phone meets. A phone that fails is often an emulator or a modified phone, so apps can limit what accounts on it may do.

## Why emulators fail

An emulator isn't a Play Protect certified device, so it fails the device verdict, and it has no hardware-backed key for the strong one. Every account on it starts from that.

## On Distilled

Every Distilled phone passes all three verdicts. We check each phone when it starts and every 6 hours, and show you the result.

## Questions

**Will my accounts get banned?**

No one can promise that, because apps also judge what an account does. We give each account its own device and its own IP, the two things that get accounts linked and banned together.

Source: https://distilled.cx/guides/play-integrity/