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Google’s Advanced Protection Arrives on Android: Should You Use It?

www.eff.org

Google’s Advanced Protection Arrives on Android: Should You Use It?

With this week’s release of Android 16, Google added a new security feature to Android, called Advanced Protection. At-risk people—like journalists, activists, or politicians—should consider turning on. Here’s what it does, and how to decide if it’s a good fit for your security needs. To get some confusing naming schemes clarified at the start: Advanced Protection is an extension of Google’s Advanced Protection Program, which protects your Google account from phishing and harmful downloads, and is not to be confused with Apple’s Advanced Data Protection, which enables end-to-end encryption for most data in iCloud. Instead, Google's Advanced Protection is more comparable to the iPhone’s Lockdown Mode, Apple’s solution to protecting high risk people from specific types of digital threats on Apple devices. Advanced Protection for Android is meant to provide stronger security by: enabling certain features that aren’t on by default, disabling the ability to turn off features that are enabled by default, and adding new security features. Put together, this suite of features is designed to isolate data where possible, and reduce the chances of interacting with unsecure websites and unknown individuals. For example, when it comes to enabling existing features, Advanced Protection turns on Android’s “theft detection” features (designed to protect against in-person thefts), forces Chrome to use HTTPS for all website connections (a feature we’d like to[...]

1 comments

  • The simple answer for me is no. Anyone is welcome to correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Google is moving to enhance security for users who are at a higher risk of targeted attacks, such as journalists, activists, and public figures. They are implementing this under the guise of security.

    Additionally, they appear to be seeking to protect the ecosystem against open-source developers and outside developers who choose not to use Chrome, the Play Store, or other Google-based offerings, effectively reinforcing the operating system to maintain control over the Google monopoly.

    Google's reference to Apple is an admission of their plans in my opinion although I believe there is more to this which I won't go into.

    Once APP is activated, many non-Google applications are blocked from accessing Google services, which can hinder the use of alternative apps that users might prefer. My question is: wouldn't the focus on monitoring and restricting access to accounts lead to concerns about surveillance and the extent to which Google monitors user behavior to enforce these protections?

    It sounds like a slippery slope to me.