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Google’s Advanced Protection for Vulnerable Users Comes to Android
A new extra-secure mode for Android 16 will let at-risk users lock their devices down.
On mobile, the launch of Apple's iOS Lockdown Mode in 2022 was one concerted effort to shed nonessential functionality in favor of maximum security— a trade-off most users wouldn't want to make, but that could be very worth it for a public figure, activist, journalist, or dissident living under daily scrutiny and threat of attack. Advanced Protection on Android is meant to be as usable and flexible as possible, though, leaning on Google's rapidly expanding on-device AI scanning capabilities to provide monitoring and alerts without having to completely eliminate features. Still, the mode imposes restrictions that can't be turned off, like blocking phones from connecting to historic 2G data networks and disabling Chrome's Javascript optimizer, which could alter or break some web functionality on some sites.
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