For Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Google is announcing new Android features to help combat messaging and phone scams, including enhanced protection mode in Google Messages.
Google is introducing an “enhanced protection mode” for its Messages app. Billed as providing the “most powerful and intelligent defenses” against complex scam threats, this mode starts with Scam Detection leveraging Private AI Compute. Google Messages will use “cloud Gemini models to evaluate complex message context and understand a scammer’s intent more quickly when you’re in a conversation with an unknown sender.”
This secure cloud analysis augments and extends our existing on-device detection, allowing us to identify novel and sophisticated attacks, actively uncovering and stopping abusers who try to hide their tracks
Private AI Compute, which is used by Pixel Screenshots and other apps, encrypts data and processes it in a secure space that Google cannot access for any other purpose.
The existing link protections work to flag malicious and phishing websites. With enhanced protection mode, on-device Gemini Nano uses “real-time web signals to evaluate whether an unfamiliar link is trustworthy before you tap.” This feature is available on the Pixel 10+, Samsung Galaxy S26 series, Galaxy Z Flip 8 and Z Fold 8. and “other select devices.”
The final feature adds redesigned warnings that “give you extra time and clearer context to pause before tapping links sent from numbers not saved in your contacts.”
This feature was previously only available on devices in select countries or on devices with Android Advanced Protection enabled
Enhanced protection mode is an opt-in setting that is rolling out over the “coming weeks.”
Meanwhile, Google is expanding on-device Scam Detection for chat notifications beyond Pixel to HONOR, Infinix, iQOO, itel, JOVI, Motorola, OPPO, OnePlus, realme, TECNO, vivo, and Xiaomi devices.
On the phone scam front, automatic screen-share privacy that hides sensitive info (like passwords and banking information) in native apps will soon apply to Chrome and WebView on Android 15+ devices.
Google will block apps from “quietly enabling call forwarding in the background” to combat one-time passcode theft. This call forwarding protection will be available starting in early December on Pixel and other select devices.
If a scammer attempts to trick you into manually typing an MMI forwarding code on your phone’s dial pad, Android proactively warns you before it can take effect.
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