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Your phone probably contains banking, payment and personal information that can be remotely stolen via numerous known and unknown bugs in the Android software. This is attractive to criminals.
Vendors (LG, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc.), after selling you their phone, have no incentive to keep your phone's software up to date with Google's fixes. Your Android phone is probably out of date and therefore a gaping security hole through which attackers can steal your stuff from the safety of their own laptops.
In short, your phone could be hacked wide open from afar through a single innocent-looking email, MMS or web-page.
In the end the recommendations are: buy an Iphone, stick to Google phones or install a custom ROM.
Original URL: Android security in 2016 is a mess
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday December 06 2016, @11:27PM
Phones are computers, and should get updates like their bigger cousins. We don't look to HP or Dell or our local white box reseller for security updates, so why should we be asking Samsung and LuckyGoldstar for security updates? Then manufacturers will have to write drivers to standards, and that will be more secure too.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @11:58PM
so why should we be asking Samsung and LuckyGoldstar for security updates?
And while we're at it, how about having the bootloader unlocked and give actual control of the phone to the user? Dispense with the proprietary blobs, as well.
I can dream.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday December 07 2016, @02:51AM
Modern cars probably have more lines of code.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @09:00AM
Not much difference there.
Soon the last Microsoft desktop OS (Windows 7) will stop getting security updates, and then computers will be out of luck too. Only touch devices (Windows 8, 10) will get security updates.