Update, July 11, 2025: This story, originally published on July 9, has been updated with details of yet another new set of security defenses, in addition to the Advanced Protection for Chrome, that will help Google Android users fight off the smartphone hacker threat.
Google security updates are not exactly in short supply: Chrome browser vulnerabilities, Google Messages sender verification, and, of course, new Gmail features all vying for your attention. Sometimes, however, there’s a danger of drowning in updates which leads to the most important of them potentially going unnoticed. Google has just published a posting to ensure that doesn’t happen with the latest protections for Android users against hack attacks. And quite rightly so, as it’s not easy protecting more than 3 billion users, with multiple risk profiles across that user base, from hackers. As Google said, “Less sophisticated attacks by commodity malware can be very lucrative for attackers when done at scale, but so can sophisticated attacks on targeted users.” Let me, or rather Google, introduce you to two new sets of defense features that will help protect you and your smartphone from the hacker threat. First up is Advanced Protection, which does exactly what it says on the tin, allowing you to tailor your security protections to fit your personal risk profiles. Secondly, we have a brand new System Services function that will enable you to better manage updates and, by so doing, close another threat window before attackers can climb through. Here’s what you need to know.
Google Confirms Advanced Security Protection In Chrome On Android
You might be forgiven for thinking that the only threat you need to worry about as an Android smartphone user is the SMS one, as attacks surge and hackers employ new mobile SMS Blaster hardware weaponry. You would, however, be very wrong indeed. Smartphone hackers have a diverse array of attacks to choose from, each targeting a different victim group and employing a different methodology. Some of the more commonly used have been picked up upon by David Adrian, Javier Castro and Peter Kotwicz from the Google Chrome Security Team in a July 8 posting.
Advanced Protection acts as an extension to Google’s existing Advanced Protection Program, by providing a device-level security setting for those Android users most at risk. Think of it as being a “single control point for at-risk users on Android that enables important security settings across applications,” Google said. This integrates with Chrome on Android, the trio of security experts explained, in three specific ways:
- By enabling the always use secure connections setting to protect users from hackers injecting malicious content or reading data.
- By enabling full site isolation, as long as your Android device has at least 4GB of RAM, to prevent the loading of malicious sites in the same process as legitimate websites.
- By reducing the attack surface through the disabling of JavaScript optimizations.
“We additionally recommend at-risk users join the Advanced Protection Program with their Google accounts,” the Google Chrome security team said, “which will require the account to use phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication methods and enable Advanced Protection on any of the user’s Android devices.”
Google Introduces System Services Settings For Most Android Users
The second update coming to most Android users, by which I mean those running Android 6 or later, is something called System Services Settings. This new page will enable Android users to manage those background services that help keep devices safe. Although these services are, by their nature, all but invisible to the user, just because they are in the background doesn’t devalue their criticality in terms of smartphone security. These are the processes that ensure the heartbeat of your Android device is kept updated with the latest security updates. The new System Services Settings page, which you can think of as a control center for background services, will list the services and make updating them more efficient and effective. No longer will they require specific and separate Play Store downloads; in fact, they will update even if automatic Play Store downloads are disabled.
The new System Services Settings page is expected to arrive with the July Google System Services update, while Advanced Protection is available on Google Android 16 in Chrome version 137 and later.
