Live threat detection with real-time alerts will protect you from malware and dangerous apps.
Back in May, Google announced that it would be upgrading Play Protect with a new live threat detection feature to improve its ability to detect fraud and abuse. Today, Google announced that live threat detection with real-time alerts is now rolling out in Google Play Protect, starting with the Pixel 6 and later.
With live threat detection, Google says that Play Protect's on-device machine learning models will analyze "additional behavioral signals related to the use of sensitive permissions and interactions with other apps and services." Google says the feature looks at "actual activity patterns of apps" so it can find malicious apps that "try extra hard to hide their behavior or lie dormant for a time before engaging in suspicious activity." If live threat detection finds suspicious behavior in an app, then Play Protect will send that app to Google for further review and then throw up a real-time alert so you can take immediate action.
Google says this feature runs entirely on device in a privacy preserving way through Private Compute Core, which already handles other sensitive features on many Android devices.
Live threat detection with real-time alerts in Google Play Protect is rolling out first on Pixel 6+ devices but will be coming to devices from additional phone makers in the coming months. Google said in May that it'll be coming to devices from Honor, Lenovo, Nothing, OnePlus, OPPO, Sharp, and Transsion. The feature is currently trained to detect stalkerware, ie. software that collects your personal or sensitive data for monitoring you without your consent, but Google says it'll explore expanding it to detect other types of harmful apps in the future.
