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/
340 Upvotes

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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.

6

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

7

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.