Google could potentially assist individuals in avoiding significant financial fraud.
Google is ready to challenge the persistent problem of fraud among Android users. The company has started its enhanced fraud protection with Google Play Protect, which promises to protect Android users from financial fraud.
Google will roll out this feature in Singapore in collaboration with Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency (CSA) in the coming weeks.
According to the company, this enhanced fraud protection automatically analyzes and blocks the installation of applications that may use sensitive runtime permissions, which are often misused for financial fraud when a user tries to install an application from a source that downloads it from an Internet page (web browsers, messaging applications, or file managers).
“This enhancement checks the permissions reported by the app in real-time, specifically looking for four runtime permission requests: RECEIVE_SMS, READ_SMS, BIND_Notifications, and Accessibility,” the company said.
Fraudsters often abuse these rights to intercept one-time passwords via SMS or notifications, and to spy on screen content.
Google’s analysis of major malware families that exploit these sensitive runtime privileges found that more than 95 percent of installs came from Internet sideloading sources.
It is vital that Google find a solution to the major threat that is financial fraud. Indians complain about these scams every other day and the company clearly hasn’t done enough to prevent such an attack. The company could have considered India as one of the major countries to pilot this new feature, but that is likely to happen in the coming months.
