Yesterday I received a phone call from someone claiming to work at Bank Harimau and found some issues with my bank account. The phone call was suspicious because I don’t have a Bank Harimau account because I use Cina India Melayu Bank. I just accepted the soft lies from his tongue before abruptly ending the call.
Online scams, especially involving calls purporting to be from bank representatives, are on the rise and if you’re an Android user, a new feature has been announced that will solve this problem. The new feature, enabled on devices running Android 11 and above, terminates phone calls suspected of being scams.
Using a verified bank database, the phone call will be compared to a list of official bank phone numbers. This is done by Android contacting the banking app on the phone to verify that the call is being made.
Banks can also list certain numbers only for phone calls by customers and not from the bank. This will prevent Caller ID spoofing techniques from being used for banking fraud purposes. This feature is only supported on devices with the Revolut, Itaú, and Nubank banking apps at this time.
Next, the Live Threat Detection feature detects suspicious activity from apps. If it is detected, a notification will be given to the user to delete the app. It still requires manual input from the owner before the app is deleted. This feature will be supported starting with Android 17.
Finally, another layer of security is introduced when a device is marked as lost (Mark as Lost) in the Find Hub app. Typically, the device can be unlocked by entering a password or pin. Thieves may know your password and pin to turn off the location tracking system. With Android 17, users can set biometric authentication (such as fingerprint) to be performed before the device can be removed from lost mode.
