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Advisorygoogle-security-whats-new-in-android-security-privacy-2025-106760b77b65

What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025

Posted by Dave Kleidermacher, VP Engineering, Android Security and Privacy Android’s intelligent protections keep you safe from everyday dangers.

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Read the exact official research article before applying its defensive techniques or drawing conclusions.

Read Google Security Research: What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025 (opens a new tab)

What happened

Posted by Dave Kleidermacher, VP Engineering, Android Security and Privacy

Android’s intelligent protections keep you safe from everyday dangers. Our dedication to your security is validated by security experts, who consistently rank top Android devices highest in security, and score Android smartphones, led by the Pixel 9 Pro, as leaders in anti-fraud efficacy .

Android is always developing new protections to keep you, your device, and your data safe. Today, we’re announcing new features and enhancements that build on our industry-leading protections to help keep you safe from scams, fraud, and theft on Android.

Smarter protections against phone call scams

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Our research shows that phone scammers often try to trick people into performing specific actions to initiate a scam, like changing default device security settings or granting elevated permissions to an app. These actions can result in spying, fraud, and other abuse by giving an attacker deeper access to your device and data.

To combat phone scammers, we’re working to block specific actions and warn you of these sophisticated attempts. This happens completely on device and is applied only with conversations with non-contacts.

Android’s new in-call protections 1 provide an additional layer of defense, preventing you from taking risky security actions during a call like:

Disabling Google Play Protect , Android’s built-in security protection, that is on by default and continuously scans for malicious app behavior, no matter the download source.

Sideloading an app for the first time from a web browser, messaging app or other source – which may not have been vetted for security and privacy by Google.

Granting accessibility permissions, which can give a newly downloaded malicious app access to gain control over the user's device and steal sensitive/private data, like banking information.

And if you’re screen sharing during a phone call, Android will now automatically prompt you to stop sharing at the end of a call. These protections help safeguard you against scammers that attempt to gain access to sensitive information to conduct fraud.

Piloting enhanced in-call protection for banking apps

Screen sharing scams are becoming quite common, with fraudsters often impersonating banks, government agencies, and other trusted institutions – using screen sharing to guide users to perform costly actions such as mobile banking transfers. To better protect you from these attacks, we’re piloting new in-call protections for banking apps, starting in the UK.

When you launch a participating banking app while screen sharing with an unknown contact, your Android device will warn you about the potential dangers and give you the option to end the call and to stop screen sharing with one tap.

This feature will be enabled automatically for participating banking apps whenever you're on a phone call with an unknown contact on Android 11+ devices. We are working with UK banks Monzo, NatWest and Revolut to pilot this feature for their customers in the coming weeks and will assess the results of the pilot ahead of a wider roll out.

Making real-time Scam Detection in Google Messages even more intelligent

We recently launched AI-powered Scam Detection in Google Messages and Phone by Google to protect you from conversational scams that might sound innocent at first, but turn malicious and can lead to financial loss or data theft. When Scam Detection discovers a suspicious conversation pattern, it warns you in real-time so you can react before falling victim to a costly scam.

AI-powered Scam Detection is always improving to help keep you safe while also keeping your privacy in mind. With Google’s advanced on-device AI, your conversations stay private to you. All message processing remains on-device and you’re always in control. You can turn off Spam Protection, which includes Scam Detection, in your Google Messages at any time.

Prior to targeting conversational scams, Scam Detection in Google Messages focused on analyzing and detecting package delivery and job seeking scams . We’ve now expanded our detections to help protect you from a wider variety of sophisticated scams including:

Toll road and other billing fee scams

Crypto scams

Financial impersonation scams

Gift card and prize scams

Technical support scams

And more

These enhancements apply to all Google Messages users.

Fighting fraud and impersonation with Key Verifier

To help protect you from scammers who try to impersonate someone you know, we’re launching a helpful tool called Key Verifier. The feature allows you and the person you’re messaging to verify the identity of the other party through public encryption keys, protecting your end-to-end encrypted messages in Google Messages.

By verifying contact keys in your Google Contacts app (through a QR code scanning or number comparison), you can have an extra layer of assurance that the person on the other end is genuine and that your conversation is private with them.

Key Verifier provides a visual way for you and your contact to quickly confirm that your secret keys match, strengthening your confidence that you’re communicating with the intended recipient and not a scammer.

For example, if an attacker gains access to a friend’s phone number and uses it on another device to send you a message – which can happen as a result of a SIM swap attack – their contact's verification status will be marked as no longer verified in the Google Contacts app, suggesting your friend’s account may be compromised or has been changed.

Key Verifier will launch later this summer in Google Messages on Android 10+ devices.

Comprehensive mobile theft protection, now even stronger

Physical device theft can lead to financial fraud and data theft, with the value of your banking and payment information many times exceeding the value of your phone. This is one of the reasons why last year we launched the mobile industry’s most comprehensive suite of theft protection features to protect you before, during, and after a theft.

Since launch, our theft protection features have helped protect data on hundreds of thousands of devices that may have fallen into the wrong hands. This includes devices that were locked by Remote Lock or Theft Detection Lock and remained locked for over 48 hours.

Most recently, we launched Identity Check for Pixel and Samsung One UI 7 devices, providing an extra layer of security even if your PIN or password is compromised. This protection will also now be available from more device manufacturers on supported devices that upgrade to Android 16.

Coming later this year, we’re further hardening Factory Reset protections, which will restrict all functionalities on devices that are reset without the owner’s authorization. You'll also gain more control over our Remote Lock feature with the addition of a security challenge question, helping to prevent unauthorized actions.

We’re also enhancing your security against thieves in Android 16 by providing more protection for one-time passwords that are received when your phone is locked. In higher risk scenarios 2 , Android will hide one-time passwords on your lock screen, ensuring that only you can see them after unlocking your device.

Advanced Protection: Google’s strongest security for mobile devices

Protecting users who need heightened security has been a long-standing commitment at Google, which is why we have our Advanced Protection Program that provides Google’s strongest protections against targeted attacks.

To enhance these existing device defenses, Android 16 extends Advanced Protection with a device-level security setting for Android users. Whether you’re an at-risk individual – such as a journalist, elected official, or public figure – or you just prioritize security, Advanced Protection gives you the ability to activate Google’s strongest security for mobile devices, providing greater peace of mind that you’r

Related technology

Sources

  1. Primary source

    Google Security Research: What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025 (opens a new tab)

    Exact official article/advisory identified by the feed; title, source dates, and any supplied article excerpt.

    Published Checked

  2. Primary source

    Google Security Research syndication feed (opens a new tab)

    The RSS/Atom/RDF entry supplied this exact link and any available title, date, and excerpt.

    Published Date not suppliedChecked

Cite this record

For factual claims, cite the primary sources above; cite KEVWire for its compilation, dates, and classifications.

APA

KEVWire. (2025, May 14). What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025. https://kevwire.com/record/google-security-whats-new-in-android-security-privacy-2025-106760b77b65

MLA

"What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025." KEVWire, 14 May 2025, kevwire.com/record/google-security-whats-new-in-android-security-privacy-2025-106760b77b65.

Chicago

KEVWire. "What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025." Last modified May 14, 2025. https://kevwire.com/record/google-security-whats-new-in-android-security-privacy-2025-106760b77b65.

Evidence summary (plain text)

What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025 (May 13, 2025).
Posted by Dave Kleidermacher, VP Engineering, Android Security and Privacy

Android’s intelligent protections keep you safe from everyday dangers. Our dedication to your security is validated by security experts, who consistently rank top Android devices highest in security, and score Android smartphones, led by the Pixel 9 Pro, as leaders in anti-fraud efficacy .

Android is always developing new protections to keep you, your device, and your data safe. Today, we’re announcing new features and enhancements that build on our industry-leading protections to help keep you safe from scams, fraud, and theft on Android.

 Smarter protections against phone call scams 

Our research shows that phone scammers often try to trick people into performing specific actions to initiate a scam, like changing default device security settings or granting elevated permissions to an app. These actions can result in spying, fraud, and other abuse by giving an attacker deeper access to your device and data. To combat phone scammers, we’re working to block specific actions and warn you of these sophisticated attempts. This happens completely on device and is applied only with conversations with non-contacts. 

Android’s new in-call protections 1 provide an additional layer of defense, preventing you from taking risky security actions during a call like:

 Disabling Google Play Protect , Android’s built-in security protection, that is on by default and continuously scans for malicious app behavior, no matter the download source.

 Sideloading an app for the first time from a web browser, messaging app or other source – which may not have been vetted for security and privacy by Google. 

 Granting accessibility permissions, which can give a newly downloaded malicious app access to gain control over the user's device and steal sensitive/private data, like banking information. 

And if you’re screen sharing during a phone call, Android will now automatically prompt you to stop sharing at the
Sources:
Google Security Research: What’s New in Android Security and Privacy in 2025: https://security.googleblog.com/2025/05/whats-new-in-android-security-privacy-2025.html
Google Security Research syndication feed: https://security.googleblog.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss&redirect=false&max-results=50
Record ID: google-security-whats-new-in-android-security-privacy-2025-106760b77b65.
Record origin: Ingested record.
AI evidence: Not assessed.
About this data

This record was ingested from a data source. Retrieved: Oct 26, 2026, 23:35 UTC. Ingestion is not an independent editorial investigation.

Technology tags indicate possible relevance, not verified exposure. Confirm the affected product, version, and configuration against your own inventory; KEVWire does not scan your systems.

A personal reading checklist on this device, not verified remediation.

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