How to Use Android’s In-Call Scam Protection to Stay Safe from Financial Frauds

Google introduced a pilot in the UK earlier this year focused on in-call protections for financial apps. The trial helped thousands of users safely end potentially fraudulent calls before losing money.

After its strong performance - and with similar pilots now running in Brazil and India - the feature has been expanded to cover most major banks in the UK. Here's how it works and how to use Android's in-call scam protection to stay safe from frauds -

How Android's In-Call Scam Protection Works

So basically, you don't need to do anything. When you open a participating banking app on your Android device while screen sharing and on a phone call with an unknown number (not saved in your contacts), your device will automatically warn you about the potential danger and give you the option to end the call and stop screen sharing with just one tap.

The warning includes a 30-second pause before you can continue, which helps break the "spell" of the scammer's social engineering, disrupting the false sense of urgency and panic commonly used to manipulate you into a scam.

In recent years, Google has introduced advanced features to detect scams and safeguard users across phone calls, text messages, and messaging app notifications. These measures are having a noticeable impact - a recent YouGov survey commissioned by Google found that Android users were 58% more likely than iOS users to report that they hadn't received any scam texts in the past week.

Via