Android is about as open as operating systems get these days. Compared to iOS, which allows very little wiggle room for non-Apple authorized customization, Android users can do almost anything to their phone — for better or worse — with a little bit of tinkering. One of the ways people can utilize the openness of their smartphone is by sideloading apps outside the Google Play Store, which can obviously be a bit dangerous regardless of whether you’re as careful as they come with technology or not. Malware can come in all shapes and sizes, so Google has taken the steps to finally roll out an enhanced version of Google Play Protect, whichwe mentioned was being worked on last month.
Google Play Protect has been active for many years on Android devices as a soft safeguard against malware on any device with Google Play Services installed. If you’ve ever downloaded an APK from an unknown source, for example, Google would tell you that it is potentially harmful, giving you an extra second to think about what you’re doing. Depending on your phone settings, Google Play Protect could even automatically stop the installation and delete the APK file from your device.
It’s changed a bit today.Google saysthat it has developed new security capabilities to help protect your phone even more, including real-time scanning “at the code-level” to combat malicious apps that could do lots of damage to your files, or worse, on your phone. Before, Google kept growing an ever-growing app list in its servers that it would then cross-check against what users would try to install, and based upon if it was known or not, it would create that pre-installation prompt we all know today. Now, it will offer the ability to scan the app’s code to detect emerging threats in the cybersecurity world. Basically, it means that you will be better protected from cyber criminals when going outside the Play Store to download apps.
Google says that scanning apps in live time will extract “important signals from the app and send them to the Play Protect backend infrastructure for a code-level evaluation.” It’s not meant to take long at all and will be completed fairly instantly. Each time an app across the entire Android ecosystem is evaluated, Google’s list of what it checks on will grow, helping leverage a large user base into even stronger protection.
As for the roll-out phase, the new version of Play Protect will debut in India before expanding to the rest of the world in the following months. We originally thought it would show up in September. After what was presumably a bit of a delay, it’s nice to know that the new security measure is starting to show up around the world now.
This isn’t the first major Android security update that Google has introduced this month. We reported onAndroid Safe Browsing, which is a new feature that is being developed to enhance users' sense of security and protect against potential threats from malicious websites, earlier this week. With it being so easy nowadays for anyone to access our information from anywhere and at any time, any upgrade to smartphone security is always a plus. There’s no timeframe for when and where next the enhanced Google Play Protect will show up, but hopefully it doesn’t take more than a handful of months for it to expand quickly.
