A wise person once said, “If you’re online, you’re not private any more”. Well, that’s what these days people find themselves in a position where anything can happen even without actively making any mistakes. Recently, Android Safe Browsing is being rolled out that’ll protect your device from security risks.
Even the reliable and safe Google Play Store is failing to detect malware-infested applications. So, if you’re thinking that you’re protected enough from security threats on your Android devices, that’s not true.
According to the McAfee report, a previously unknown stealth backdoor ‘Xamalicious’ has infected more than 330K Android devices via the malicious apps listed on the official Google Play Store.
We all know about McAfee due to its computer security services and this company is also an active member of the App Defense Alliance. A few months ago, McAfee found that almost 14 malware-infected apps were present on the Google Play Store with hundreds of thousands of installs.
Even though those suspicious apps have been removed from the Google Play Store, Android users carrying the Xamalicious malware on their devices are those who’ve installed them since the year 2020. Precisely, these malicious apps require manual scans and cleanup processes.
But sadly most smartphone users still don’t use any scan or cleanup tool to reduce vulnerability issues. Meanwhile, Google has started pushing the Android Safe Browsing feature to its users for a safer browsing experience on their devices.
This feature will help in removing malware, phishing, etc which can trouble you with data and security breaches.
Just a day ago, an Android expert Mishaal Rahman explained in a tweet about this feature which is designed to notify you of potential threats on your handset for compromising security.
It usually works by leveraging Google’s SafetyNet Safe Browsing API module that allows apps the ability to determine if a URL has been listed by Google as a known threat or not. So, before visiting a potentially dangerous link, your Android device will detect it and give you a warning with a notification.
Android devices will be connected with Google’s threat detection network.
Google is rolling out a new "Android Safe Browsing" page to users that lets you see which apps support the feature as well as a toggle "live threat protection" which enables "more accurate threat detection."
Android Safe Browsing "alerts you to security threats, like harmful… pic.twitter.com/xMIvmJh7Pl
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) February 13, 2024
To use this feature, you should enable it on Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy smartphones under the Settings > Security & Privacy respectively.
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Though this is referred to as a new feature, multiple reports have been claiming about ‘Android Safe Browsing’ development for a couple of months. Google always try pushing new features or improvements to its beta version for a few months and then they push publicly.
Similarly, this particular feature appeared in a Google Play Services Beta version in October 2023.
Android users prefer to install applications directly from the Play Store instead of sideloading APK files from any third-party sources. However, Android fans aren’t that much of safe yet from installing malware.
This is not the first time it happened because there might be some loopholes in security risk checking for the Play Store. What’s your take on it?
