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fliptop [soylentnews.org] writes:

With this week’s release of Android 16 [blog.google], Google added a new security feature to Android, called Advanced Protection. At-risk people—like journalists, activists, or politicians—should consider turning on. Here’s what it does, and how to decide if it’s a good fit for your security needs [eff.org]:

To get some confusing naming schemes clarified at the start: Advanced Protection is an extension of Google’s Advanced Protection Program [google.com], which protects your Google account from phishing and harmful downloads, and is not to be confused with Apple’s Advanced Data Protection, which enables end-to-end encryption for most data in iCloud. Instead, Google's Advanced Protection is more comparable to the iPhone’s Lockdown Mode [eff.org], Apple’s solution to protecting high risk people from specific types of digital threats on Apple devices.

Advanced Protection for Android is meant to provide stronger security by: enabling certain features that aren’t on by default, disabling the ability to turn off features that are enabled by default, and adding new security features. Put together, this suite of features is designed to isolate data where possible, and reduce the chances of interacting with unsecure websites and unknown individuals.

[...] It’s also worth considering that enabling Advanced Protection may impact how you use your device. For example, Advanced Protection disables the JavaScript optimizer in Chrome, which may break some websites, and since Advanced Protection blocks unknown apps, you won’t be able to side-load. There’s also the chance that some of the call screening and scam detection features may misfire and flag legitimate calls.

TFA gives instructions on how to enable and disable Advanced Protection.

Related: Apple's New Lockdown Mode for iPhone Fights Hacking [soylentnews.org]

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