You're using a really old Android device with no Google Play Protect.You aren’t able to discern between a suspicious link and a trustworthy link.You install APKs from untrustworthy sources.Your Android device doesn’t come with Google services, like one of the newer Huawei phones or you’ve installed an aftermarket firmware and have chosen to use it without Google services.However, if one or more of the following things apply to you, an anti-virus app may be of some use. So there's no point installing something that's going to be of no use to you and also hogs vital aspects of your phone. It can also block a malicious app until you uninstall it or directly remove it, depending on the threat.Īlthough antivirus products on Android have come a long way, even the antivirus products from renowned companies will still consume 3 to 8 percent of your battery as well as other system resources. You can also manually run Play Protect to scan your Android device. It automatically scans both apps installed via the Play Store, and ones downloaded via third-party services. Meaning, as it scans billions of devices around the world, it's constantly incorporating what it's learning from these scan results. Īccording to Google, Play Protect is backed by the company’s machine learning algorithms and it improves itself in realtime. Think of it as your pre-installed antivirus on devices with Google. It was first released with Android 8.0 Oreo, and now comes with every Android device that has Google Play Services version 11 or newer installed on it.

Play Protect is Google Play’s built-in malware protection for Android. Moreover, the company releases monthly Android security updates that are meant to fix possible issues affecting Android devices.

The company also ships built-in malware protection - Google Play Protect - on Android devices with GMS. Google constantly improves the security of Android, and with each version, we see the company announce new under-the-hood changes to further enhance it. SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT What are some of the built-in security protections in Android by Google?

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