Google Announced a Bunch of Security Upgrades for Android This Week

Source Domain: lifehacker.com

Google announced many new Android features and upgrades during The Android Show: I/O Edition. Among these are a handful of security and privacy tools Google hopes will protect users (and their data) from scams and theft. Android already has a suite of safeguards—in-call scam alerts, anti-theft settings, and a lockdown mode called Advanced Protection, to name a few—which the new features largely build on and strengthen. Here’s what’s new.

Android will automatically end calls that spoof financial institutions

Google rolled out a feature last year to protect against bank impersonators who might attempt to steal your login credentials or convince you to transfer money. In-call pop-ups warn you if you try to open a financial app while on the phone with unknown numbers to prevent you from sharing your screen with fraudsters. Now, Android will also attempt to verify calls purportedly from financial institutions and hang up if it detects that the call is a scam. If you have a participating bank’s app installed on your device and are logged in, Android will use the app to confirm legitimacy. Initially, this feature will be available to users on Android 11 and higher who bank with Revolut, Itaú, and Nubank—meaning this won’t apply to U.S. customers yet—but Google is expecting to expand to more institutions later this year.

Live Threat Detection is expanding how it spots malicious apps

Live Threat Detection is an AI-powered, on-device security feature that continuously scans apps’ activity patterns to identify anything suspicious and potentially malicious. At launch, it focused on stalkerware, but it has since become more robust in detecting malware. Live Threat Detection will now check for SMS forwarding (if an app forwards a message to another number) and accessibility overlays, which use an accessibility permission to display content over your screen.

Later this year, Android 17 devices will also get dynamic signal monitoring, which identifies…

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