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posted by mrpg on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-wait-for-2017 dept.

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 Your Android phone is probably out of date and therefore a gaping security hole through which attackers can steal your stuff from the safety of their own laptops.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


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by ilsa on Wednesday December 07 2016, @04:44PM

    by ilsa (6082) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 07 2016, @04:44PM (#438413)

    I made the decision to never use a Samsung mobile device again after having an S3. I eventually gave up and was forced to root it and install cyanogenmod just so my phone would be half-way usable.

    The only reason they're even providing updates now (and even then I'm guessing only on a few of their devices, not their entire lineup) was because they were embarrassed into doing it.

    This is why I stick with Apple devices now. Sure, they're a bunch of greedy, money-grabbing assholes, but at least they make an effort to keep their OS secure and stable, unlike Google nor every manufacturer that puts out Android devices.

    (Also keep in mind that just because a device in the US gets an update, doesn't mind the exact same device in another country will. The likelyhood that this happens is very low.)