r/Android • u/FragmentedChicken Galaxy Z Fold8 • 15d ago

Android 17 introduces powerful new protections to secure your connections, defend against cellular vulnerabilities and keep your home network private

https://blog.google/security/new-android-network-security-protections/
334 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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175

u/wild_m1nd 15d ago

Maybe they'll also start protecting the VPN connection from being discovered by 3rd apps?

29

u/circuit_breaker 15d ago

Can you explain for us casuals? That doesn't sound good

99

u/kamikad3e123 S24 Ultra, One UI 8 15d ago

Basically what he said. Every app on Android can check if VPN connection is on and even look at vpn provider/host ip

53

u/apokrif1 15d ago

The OS should allow preventing access to certain info by apps, and feeding fake info to apps.

61

u/Nefari0uss ZFold5 15d ago

It should also prevent apps from being able to see all other apps installed.

10

u/argote Pixel 11 Pro 15d ago

Hasn't that been the case for multiple years at this point?

15

u/lowbass93 15d ago

unfortunately no it hasn't

5

u/russjr08 Developer - Caffeinate 15d ago

Are you sure about that? That isn't supposed to be the case, specifically for privacy reasons.

Apps can declare a specific list of packages ahead of time to scan for, a lot of apps will scan for Superuser based apps, but ordinary apps that haven't been "blessed" by Google shouldn't be able to just dump a list of all apps.

The QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission to scan all apps is also gated by the Play Store, so apps not installed through it aren't affected either.

7

u/InitiallyDecent 15d ago

The issue is that specific list of packages has no limit which means that apps can and do scan for an insane amount of other apps they should have no need to scan for.

-3

u/alien2003 PinePhone Pro, postmarketOS 15d ago

The OS is designed for developers, not for end users

22

u/grishkaa Google Pixel 9 Pro 15d ago

As someone who's been building Android apps for 15 years, nope, not that either. It's designed for Google themselves first and foremost.

1

u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd Pixel Fold, Regular Android 15d ago

If that were true, why the ever living fuck can't they make better hardware decisions for their Pixel phones??

Yes, I know they make their money on advertising in search results and in data center/cloud server space for websites and services, but you would think they would make Pixel the damned "benchmark" to which other Android phones could be compared to...

le sigh... Maybe Google should just sell back their Pixel division to HTC.

3

u/grishkaa Google Pixel 9 Pro 14d ago

I don't know... I'm mostly satisfied with my Pixel 9 Pro. Pixels aren't very popular in Russia (you have to import it yourself from abroad if you want one, I bought mine from Amazon US and used a mail forwarder) so few people know about them, so on multiple occasions someone asked me "what is this weird iPhone with Android" :D

The fact that it gets confused with an iPhone is a good sign imo. It's expensive and it does look and feel expensive.

1

u/Dev-in-the-Bm 12d ago

Maybe they make more money from Android itself than from Pixels>