Over a billion Android devices at risk of malware infection globally

If your phone is running software older than Android 7.0, it might be at risk of malware infection. Security watchdog ‘Which?’ notes that over a billion Android devices are at the risk of malware infection because they no longer receive security updates.

As per Google’s own data dated May 2019, over 40 percent of all Android devices in the world were running Android 6.0 or an older version. In fact, no security updates were released for phones running Android 7.0 or an older build last year.

To test the claims, AV Comparatives put five phones running Android 7 or an older version to test, and managed to infect each one of them with a critical vulnerability, and even multiple in some cases.

Notably, one of the phones tested was Google’s own Nexus 5. To remain safe, Which? suggests users to not download any app from non-Google Play platforms.

Source: Which?