Android 12 features Material You, a new UI theming system based on color extraction. Find out how this feature jeopardizes user privacy and what you can do to protect yourself.

No. There is no room for anti-malware services in the Android design.

Such software needs permissions that reach outside of the Android security model to do things like access other application data without its consent.

Imagine for a moment that you could install anti malware with some kind of super user permission that lets the software access everything it needs to do its job. If so, malware would immediately attempt to use that feature as well, either to steal more of your data or inject itself into other applications.

Play Services is special because it operates with much higher privileges than third party software can obtain.

Now, in theory you can still scan applications before they are installed, but I would argue that there’s very limited value in doing so. If you’re installing software from sources you don’t trust, you have bigger problems. You can’t rely on a signature matching engine to detect malware in the general case.

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

  • Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
  • Don’t promote proprietary software
  • Try to keep things on topic
  • If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
  • Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
  • Be nice :)

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