Google's AI unleashes powerful scam-busting features for Android
Scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, leveraging advanced tools like generative AI to con unsuspecting victims.
According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, mobile consumers worldwide lose over $1 trillion annually to scams. To combat this growing threat, Google is rolling out cutting-edge AI-powered scam detection features for Android users.
However, while Google's efforts are impressive, there are additional steps you can take to protect yourself from scams. Let's dive into Google's new features and explore how you can further safeguard your personal information.
Join the FREE "CyberGuy Report": Get my expert tech tips, critical security alerts and exclusive deals, plus instant access to my free "Ultimate Scam Survival Guide" when you sign up!
Google has introduced two innovative AI-powered scam detection features to protect Android users from increasingly sophisticated fraud attempts.
The first feature, Scam Detection in Google Messages, enhances the existing Spam Protection functionality. This new tool utilizes on-device AI to identify suspicious patterns in SMS, MMS and RCS messages. When a message appears suspicious, users receive a real-time warning with options to dismiss, report or block the sender.
To ensure privacy, all message processing occurs directly on the user's device, keeping conversations confidential. The feature is enabled by default for non-contacts and can be verified or disabled via Google Messages → Settings → Spam Protection. It is currently available in English for users in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, with plans to expand to more countries soon.
The second feature addresses the growing issue of phone scams, with over half of Americans reporting daily scam calls in 2024. Google's Scam Detection for calls employs on-device AI models to analyze calls in real time. If a call is identified as a potential scam, users receive audio and visual warnings alerting them to the risk.
Activation requirements:
This feature prioritizes user privacy by processing call audio ephemerally without storing or sharing any data. Pixel Watch integration allows Wear OS users to enable call alerts through the Phone app after updating both devices. At present, Scam Detection for calls is available to Pixel 9+ users in the United States, with plans for broader expansion in the future.
Both of these AI-powered features are a big win for your mobile security, providing you with advanced protection against evolving scam tactics while keeping your privacy safe.
While Google's innovations provide robust protection, scammers are relentless in finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. Here are some additional steps you can take.
1. Have strong antivirus software: Google Play Protect, which is built-in malware protection for Android devices, automatically removes known malware. However, it is important to note that Google Play Protect may not be enough. Historically, it isn't 100% foolproof at removing all emerging malware from Android devices. The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links that install malware, potentially accessing your private information, is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe. Get my picks of the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices.
2. Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA): This adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second form of verification beyond just a password. 2FA makes it significantly harder for attackers to gain unauthorized access to your accounts, even if they obtain your password.
3. Regularly update your software and devices: Keeping your systems up to date ensures you have the latest security patches and protections against newly discovered vulnerabilities.
4. Use strong and unique passwords: Use long, complex passphrases that are unique for each account. Consider using a password manager to help create and store strong, unique passwords for all your accounts. Get more details about my best expert-reviewed password managers of 2025 here.
5. Be cautious about sharing information: Avoid sharing sensitive details like financial information or passwords over text or phone calls unless you're absolutely certain of the recipient's identity. Be cautious of phishing attempts and verify the legitimacy of requests for personal information.
6. Invest in personal data removal services: Use a personal data removal service to remove your personal information from people-search websites, making it harder for scammers to find and target you. While no service promises to remove all your data from the internet, having a removal service is great if you want to constantly monitor and automate the process of removing your information from hundreds of sites continuously over a longer period of time. Check out my top picks for data removal services here.
Scammers are constantly changing their tactics, but so is technology designed to protect us. Google's AI-powered scam detection features are a significant step forward in safeguarding Android users from fraud. However, staying safe requires a combination of tools and personal vigilance. By using strong antivirus software, removing yourself from people-search sites and being cautious with your personal information, you can stay one step ahead of scammers.
Do you think Google and other tech companies are doing enough to prevent scammers from attacking your Android? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact.
For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/Newsletter.
Follow Kurt on his social channels:
Answers to the most-asked CyberGuy questions:
New from Kurt:
Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Android Authority
40 minutes ago
- Android Authority
Now Playing could get this feature that it should have had from the start (APK teardown)
Ryan Haines / Android Authority TL;DR An Android Authority teardown has revealed that Google is working on an easy way to manually enable Now Playing functionality. Now Playing runs in the background and uses on-device machine learning to automatically identify music. However, the company is working on a Now Playing Quick Settings tile that would let users manually identify a track. Google has offered Now Playing functionality on Pixel phones for years now, using on-device machine learning to passively identify music playing around you. However, it looks like Google could soon let you manually activate the feature. Authority Insights story on Android Authority. Discover You're reading anstory on Android Authority. Discover Authority Insights for more exclusive reports, app teardowns, leaks, and in-depth tech coverage you won't find anywhere else. An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release. Google currently offers Now Playing as a passive feature on Pixel phones, automatically displaying the currently playing track on your lock screen and in the Now Playing history page in the settings menu. There's no proper way to manually identify a track, though. One workaround is to use the song search functionality in the Google app, which can be accessed in several ways (e.g. a quick settings tile or after tapping the microphone icon in the app). Unlike Now Playing, though, this solution requires an internet connection. Furthermore, tracks identified by the Google app aren't added to your device's Now Playing history, although they are stored in your Google account. Fortunately, an Android Authority teardown of the Android System Intelligence suite ( has revealed that Google is working on a Now Playing tile in the Quick Settings panel. We partially enabled this feature, and you can view it in the screenshots below. As the screenshots show, tapping the Now Playing tile allows you to manually identify a track while also producing a 'searching for song…' notification. We weren't able to get this feature working properly, but we're guessing the track info will eventually be displayed in a notification too. In any event, this would be a long-overdue addition to Now Playing on Pixel phones. We previously reported that many Pixel owners were having trouble getting Now Playing to work, so manually invoking the feature would be a welcome alternative to automatic detection. Our fingers are crossed that this Now Playing Quick Settings tile is implemented sooner rather than later. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Google Confirms New Attack—Stop Using Your Passwords Now
Accounts are under attack getty You need to take Google's warning seriously. You need to stop using your password and change your account. Past advice is no longer valid and leaves you at risk. As multiple attacks are confirmed, doing nothing is no longer an option. 'We constantly roll out defenses against these types of attacks,' Google assured, as it confirmed a password attack on Instagram boss Adam Mosseri. Just as we have seen with the recent 'no-reply' and 'sites' hacks, this used legitimate Google infrastructure to legitimize malicious emails, forms and websites, enabling the threat. Google warns users it 'never call you about your account." These latest attacks all start with a phone call pretending to come from Google's support desk, usually spoofing the number and other details to appear legitimate. Google also advises users to add passkeys to their accounts as "the strongest protection against threats.' Passkeys link your account sign-in to your physical devices, letting you 'sign in to your Google Account with your fingerprint, face scan, or phone screen lock, like a PIN.' But Google also warns that 'if you add a passkey to your Google Account, it won't change or remove any authentication or recovery factors you currently have on your account.' That's critical. Microsoft warns 'if a user has both a passkey and a password, and both grant access to an account, the account is still at risk for phishing.' Microsoft wants users to delete passwords, but Google is keeping passwords as a backup to passkeys. You can't delete your Google password, but there's something you can and must do. In your Google account settings, you will see multiple '2-Step Verification' options: passkeys and security keys; Google app prompts; authenticator apps; backup codes and phone numbers. While an attack can trick you into entering an authentication code into a fake sign-in page, the codes cannot by intercepted or bypassed. With one exception. This is the change you need to make. It's very likely you have added your phone number as a 2-Step Verification option. Google says it 'will use this number to help you sign in and to alert you if there's unusual activity in your account.' But it also means it will send authentication codes to your phone by text or voice. And that's dangerous. SMS two-factor authentication is high-risk, such codes can be read by malware on-device or network-level interception. That's why America's cyber defense agency warns 'do not use SMS as a second factor for authentication.' CISA says 'SMS messages are not encrypted — a threat actor with access to a telecommunication provider's network who intercepts these messages can read them.' You should use other 2-Step Verification options if you ever need to use your password. An authenticator app, Google prompts and even copies and stored or printed backup codes are fine. Ensure one or more of those are set, and then delete any phone numbers includes in the 2-Step Verification option. As for the account recovery use of a phone number, in the main account setting menu there is a 'Recovery Phone' option 'used to reach you in case we detect unusual activity in your account or you accidentally get locked out.' Make sure your number is stored here, even if is not stored as a 2-Step Verification second step. The main advice is never to use your password even with 2-Step Verification unless there is no option. Use passkeys instead — that stops the attacks. It's passwords that are being stolen, with 2-Step Verification if attackers can trick users into giving them away. That's not a risk with passkeys — there are no codes to share. If necessary, only ever use your password in an app or website you access directly and not via a link.
Axios
2 hours ago
- Axios
AI leaves web in the lurch
The AI-fixated tech industry is rapidly dismantling the old web, with no game plan for how to replace it. State of play: Chatbots have already begun to intercept web traffic and drain publishers' revenue. Now tech giants and startups aim to remodel the devices and browsers we use to access web pages, using AI to summarize or pre-empt the content that people and publishers post online. Driving the news: Tech circles were abuzz over the past week with news from the normally sedate browser world — the software category that has been shaping access to digital information since the '90s. Firefox last week debuted an experimental browser tool that provides AI summaries when users hover over links. Also last week, the Browser Company, maker of the Arc browser that's beloved by some power users, announced it was pivoting to focus on a new AI-powered browser called Dia. OpenAI has long been rumored to be working on its own browser, but has yet to ship anything. Over the last two years Google, which customarily casts itself as champion of the open web, has steadily increased the prominence of its AI summaries in every aspect of search. At Google's I/O developer conference last year it announced the U.S.-wide rollout of the AI summaries, which sit on top of search results and allow users to get their answers without clicking through to source pages (while also sometimes providing made-up facts). At this year's I/O, the company said that AI Mode, which turns a user's search into an AI chat conversation, would now be a standard feature — although some early reviews have found its information unreliable. Meanwhile, OpenAI made headlines with its announcement that it was purchasing Apple designer Jony Ive's AI device startup. Ive will now spearhead OpenAI's plan to sell new, non-smartphone gadgets that could bring generative AI answers more thoroughly into users' everyday lives. At Microsoft's recent Build developer conference the company introduced a new open project called NLweb, aimed at letting websites build their own chatbots to help site visitors access content. What they're saying: "Increasingly, web pages — apps, articles, and files — will become tool calls with AI chat interfaces," Browser Company CEO Josh Miller wrote to explain why his firm was stopping further work on Arc. Yes, but: As tech goes all in on rebuilding our web experiences with AI, there's no guarantee that the web will still be there when that job is done. With chatbots becoming users' default way to find out what's happening in the world, their makers pretend they can plaster this new interface layer over the internet without disrupting the data sources that feed it. But some media observers believe an AI-first web will choke off the money and attention that motivates web creators to keep extending the common knowledge pool. Many publishers are already seeing significant traffic and income declines from the shift toward AI search, though Google disputes there's a connection. And creative artists fear their work is being stolen or devalued. This is everyone's problem. Of course the businesses and people that have built their work around the web are afraid — but AI makers should be worried, too. The web's vast treasury (and cesspool) of human creative work has accumulated since the 1990s because people wanted to share what they know either for financial or reputational gain, or just to advance a cause or do some good. That setup gave us everything from Wikipedia and YouTube tutorials to blogs and Reddit. Nearly all of the old-school web has already been fed into AI training databases for regurgitation by bots like ChatGPT. From now on, valuable new contributions are likely to sit behind subscription paywalls or depend on unsteady alternate means of support (membership programs, nonprofit grants, government funding). If AI undermines the incentives for human beings to update the web with their news, opinions and arguments, it will also cut off its own future. The intrigue: Some in the web avant-garde are already anticipating a world in which the most ambitious or meaningful creative work takes place in what they're calling a "dark forest" web. They imagine creative communities that are purposefully isolated from the Silicon Valley bazaar, generating "anti-memes" and critical ideas without participating in social media's algorithmic competition or AI's sloppy reductivism. The other side: AI firms have introduced modest efforts to feed money back to content providers. OpenAI, for instance, has made multiple deals with online publishers (including Axios). But it's hard to see how that kind of arrangement replaces the search traffic and ad revenue that's been the sustaining anchor for so many web publishers for the past decade. When it looked like Facebook's rise was threatening to hobble news publishers, the social media giant announced multiple programs to funnel them cash. But that support was fickle and fleeting, and site owners and creators know they can't sustain their businesses purely on tech largesse. What's next: Advertising in AI chats is still in its infancy, but OpenAI has said it's going to build ads into ChatGPT, and its competitors won't be far behind. Everyone assumes this business will evolve rapidly, building on the performance-based model and personalization techniques that emerged in the search and social media eras. That can only further undermine the remnants of the web publishing industry, unless AI makers choose to share this new income with information providers. But they're spending billions on data centers, and their investors are expecting astronomical revenue growth, so no one should be surprised if they want to hold onto the lion's share. The bottom line: Google shaped a search-based web on which independent publishers and individual contributors could survive, if not always thrive. Now AI is ready to turn that entire ecosystem into a legacy product.
