Your favorite apps and personal accounts as well as sensitive data dwell on that smartphone in your pocket. In other words, your device ought to be equipped with the maximum security protection in the market to deter theft of your money or information by the wrong individuals.
Also:Â The top best Android Phones to purchase in 2025
Protection against scam calls: Google will alert users of scam attempts and prevent actions that could compromise security, including prevention of unauthorized app sideloading and permission granting during calls.
Banking app in call protection: Google is piloting new protections for banking apps to alert users of fraudulent activities, especially during screen sharing, and plans to extend these features widely.
Enhanced scam detection in Google Messages: Google Messages will soon expand its scam detection to cover more fraud types such as toll scams, crypto scams, impersonation, and prize scams, warning users of potential threats.
Improve text message security with Key Verifier: Key Verifier will enable users to confirm contacts' identities through public encryption keys, enhancing privacy and preventing impersonation or hacking during texts.
High-tech security of mobile gadgets: Google’s Advanced Protection Program and cryptography are used to secure sign-in activities, with additional features like remote lock, anti-theft measures, and enhanced device security.
There is no reason to worry about scammers, malware, and other threats to your security and privacy, as Google provides Android users with a great number of tools and technologies to protect you. The company provides highlights of the new protection that you can use or would be available soon in one of the recent articles in their blog published last month and how they will ensure you remain safe against the most recent threats. Here is the summary.
1. Protection against scam calls
The first of them is scam phone calls protection. Knowledgeable swindlers may attempt to fool you into carrying out some activities on your phone, including altering standard security settings or elevating high privileges to an unscrupulous application. So that it could keep you safe, Google will alert you of such attempts and will even prevent certain types of actions.
In addition, It is time to update your Google Pixel phone as quickly as possible here is why
The new in-call protections in Android will attempt to foil three kinds of actions:
- Disabled Google play protect. This in-built security shield is switched on by default and always on the lookout to detect bad apps regardless of the origin and hence it must not be switched off.
- Initial installation of an app by using sideloading. This will be the case when you sideload an app using a web browser or messaging app or other source, which Google has not itself approved as free of any security or privacy risk.
- Allowing permission to accessibility. This can empower an evil program to control your machine to access your banking and other confidential information.
More so, when screen sharing during a phone call, Android will remind you to disable the screen sharing feature at the end of the call to avoid being targeted by scammers since they will have access to confidential data.
The in-call safeguards entirely work internally on your phone and come into effect only when non-contacts are involved. Disabling Google Play Protect can be prevented on devices, with Android 6 or later. On the devices based on Android 16, protections against sideloading an app and providing it with accessibility permissions will be offered.
2. Banking app in call protection
There are several cases when scammers pretending to be a bank or other governmental institutions will ask you to check your screen and attempt to deceive you into taking some actions, like money transfers. To prevent such things, Google is conducting a pilot on new in-call protections to banking applications, beginning in the UK.
In case you open your banking application on your phone and you are screen-sharing with a stranger, your device will alert you on potential threats. Then you will have the opportunity to disconnect the call and stop the screen sharing in one tap only.
This protection will be automatically allowed to the participating banks application on any android based device running 11 or above. In the next few weeks, Google told us it is collaborating with UK banks to roll-out a trial with their customers. In light of pilot findings, the company will roll out this protection to many more people.
3.Enhanced scam paying attention to in Google Messages
Google Messages uses scam detection which attempts to prevent you texting with someone who seems nice at first but soon turns to questionable and at times malicious. In case of that, the feature would alert you. Presently, the areas of protection are job scams and packages delivery scams. Today it is moving to cover other kinds of frauds such as:
- Toll road, other billing fee scammers
- Crypto scams
- Scams of impersonation of financial data
- Gift card/Prize scams
- Technical support scams
4. Improve the security of text messages through Key Verifier
You may be talking to a hacker pretending to be the person you know well and targeting you in order to send you money. In a bid to fight against such frauds, Google will also set up a Key Verifier tool to recover your texts. By using this feature, you will be in a position to confirm the identity of the other party using public encryption keys. This is how it will work out.
You identify a person whom you are texting with the help of a QR code or number comparison through your Google Contacts app. As you establish an agreement about the key concerned, your secret keys are confirmed, and it will verify if the other user is your contact, but also, it will provide the chat with privacy and security.
What happens when the keys are not matching? This can be an indication that a scammer has hacked the phone number of your contact and is using it on another phone as in a SIM swap attack. The status of the contact in Google Contacts app will be updated where the status will no longer indicate verification. Then you are free to attempt to send a second message to your contact in order to warn them that there may be a possible hack of the account and cell phone number. Key Verifier is scheduled to launch later this summer, and will be available on Androids 10 and above.
When a criminal steals your phone, he/she may obtain your financial and personal information causing you a loss of money and identity theft. Such features as theft protection provided by Google already exist and are intended to assist you both before, during, and after such an incident as a robbery. Another tool the company is offering is called Identity Check which is applicable in Pixel and Samsung One UI 7.
Identity Check is now being extended to other gadgets using Android 16. Not only that. In the later part of 2021, Google will be improving on the measures against factory reset by ensuring that they will not be able to reset it without the permission of the owner. Meanwhile, the Remote Lock feature will challenge you to provide an answer to a security challenge question to ascertain your identity.
Others that will be introduced include changes to one-time passwords. When you are not connected to Wi-Fi or have not unlocked your device recently any one-time password delivered to your device will be concealed on your lock screen. This implies that your device will first be unlocked to expose such a password.
6.High-tech security of mobile gadgets
Regardless of whether you are a prominent person that is falling victim to purposeful attacks or simply a person who feels more secure with additional protection at hand, Google has an Advanced Protection Program. In this case, the company will use cryptography to ensure all your sign-in activities to secure your account, your gadget, and your data. The current Advanced Protection will be used across all devices that have Android 16.
7.Enhancements of Google play Protect
Play Protect is being beefed by Google in two ways. The feature works to keep malicious apps at bay by checking binary patterns used in malware families employing a novel type of on-device rules. In case of such a pattern, you will even get a warning that the app is malicious before attempting to install the same. These rules will be revised very often to capture the latest patterns. This new Google Play Protect is already launched globally and every Android user may now utilize this new upgrade.
 And: Why it appears that Google is losing its iron grip on search – and what I use now in its place
Hackers that are specialized in malicious applications attempt to mask their activities by obscuring or modifying an icon of the application so that you may not easily detect the software to kill it off. The system will now use live threat detection to warn you about this sort of activity as Play Protect. This security will extend to Google Pixel 6 and above phones and some other devices later this months.
8. Backing up the general security of Android
On top of all the new and better features, Google continues to work on the overall android security. This is facilitated by means and technologies that are presented with each release of Android and also it is facilitated by update of Google Play services and other enhancements. The final objective is to shield you against the sophisticated and emerging threats since cybercriminals are improving their game.
