“The next generation of Google’s Android operating system, due for release next month, will encrypt data by default for the first time, the company said Thursday, raising yet another barrier to police gaining access to the troves of personal data typically kept on smartphones,” Craig Timberg reports for The Washington Post. “”
“The move offers Android, the world’s most popular operating system for smartphones, a degree of protection that resembles what Apple on Wednesday began providing for iPhones, the leading rival to devices running Android operating systems,” Timberg reports. “Both companies have now embraced a form of encryption that will make extremely difficult for law enforcement officials to collect evidence from smartphones in most situations – even when authorities get legally binding search warrants.”
“There remain significant differences between how Apple and Google are handling encryption. Apple, which controls both the hardware and software on its devices, will be able to deliver the updated encryption on both new iPhones and iPad and also most older ones, as users update their operating systems with the latest release, iOS 8. That is likely to happen over the next several weeks, and for those with iOS 8, the encryption will be so secure that the company says it will lack the technical ability to unlock the phones or recover data for anyone,” Timberg reports. “By contrast, Google does not have the ability to deliver its updated operating system, called the ‘L-release,’ quickly to most users… The newest Android devices will likely ship with default encryption after October, but it will take many months and probably years before most Android devices have encryption by default.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: More reactive, me-too, not-really-the-same half-assery out of fragmandroid land.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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MDN showing their mastery of the headline! Saves so much time, not needing to read the story. Almost as satisfying as viewing a movie trailer that telegraphs the plot, and saving $14 and two hours.
This is actually not a big deal to most people. The hard-core privacy advocates will just buy an Android L capable device.
…Or just enable encryption themselves.
It’s been there in the system settings of pretty much every modern Android phone for over a year now. It might not be enabled by default, but it’s there.
Just make sure you don’t forget your password. It happens to people. Apple will no longer be able to recover the data on your phone like they use to.
I’m NOT saying Apple made the wrong choice, you just need to be more careful.
Gee that makes me feel safe, NOT!
Buy a iPhone.
Follow the money. How do these guys make their money. Hmmmm?
Several days of pooh-poohing Apples new stuff, followed by “look, me too!” Android is nothing but counterfeit iOS.
Believe it or not there are still about 20% of Android devices running Gingerbread and I don’t think those users are going to get any encryption by default until all those devices are designated for landfill. There is so much update lag on the Android platform it’s really quite unbelievable. The whole platform seems to be designed to create orphaned devices within such a short time yet Wall Street thinks it’s such a wonderful platform. Insane.
There is no longer any need to use Google, or be subjected to its incessant tracking, uninspired products and services.
Google Service………………Service I use
Search Engine……………….DuckDuckGo.com
…………………………………..Bing
…………………………………..Wolfram Alpha
Google Docs………………….Apple Pages / iCloud
Google Sheets……………….Apple Numbers / iCloud
…………………………………..Excel / iCloud / Dropbox
Google Presentation……….Apple Keynote / iCloud
Google Drive…………………Dropbox / iCloud –> iCloud Drive
GMAIL…………………………. iCloud Mail (mac.com / me.com )
*I still use Gmail for garbage throwaway email addresses.
Android………………………….iOS (iPhone, iPad, etc.)
my recommendations:
browser: Firefox with Adblock and Flashblock, also Opera and Safari on occasion.
search engine: DDG, Wolfram Alpha, & Yahoo. All need development and better interfaces for intelligent searching/filtering.
documents: MS Excel & Word, Adobe Pro, Apple Keynote, Mariner stuff, etc. Document search and tagging using Yep
real work: audio and video editors that don’t have anything to do with Google or Apple, and will never save or sync to anyone else’s cloud server
drives: local solid state startup volume; local solid state working volumes; solid local hard drives + NAS + automatic backup to secure remote drives, all on site. All iOS devices synced nightly by cable only. Mac Pro is connected to an IPS to prevent ungraceful crash in an electrical storm.
mail: Apple Mail through business mail server Extensive scripting to improve functionality. Yahoo junkmail account.
maps: still using Google when Apple Maps doesn’t get the job done.
It goes without saying that proxy servers and firewalls are absolute necessities to prevent hackers from accessing our local network.
Yes, Google is almost fully replaceable. If only Apple would improve Maps faster. Still very poor in many areas and no public transit, and driving directions are too slow to be useful.
Exactly,
Many web sites demand an e-mail address and G-Mail is a good place for them.
Have an internet phone line set to forward to voicemail for the exact same purpose.
bgates@msn.com is also a good email to type in in those situations, when they don’t ask for conformation.
Android, the worlds most popular operating system… whaaaaaaaattttt? :-O
If you mean to tell me that being forced on the ignorant masses like Winblows was, that every crappy device maker uses it because its free, then popular must be synonymous with horse feathers Wilbur!!!!
So basically being ‘default’ encrypted makes all the difference? I have my Galaxy S2 Encrypted via the settings for both device and SD card. And with a version of the OS that’s 2 generations old.
hey… that is… wonderful! 🙂
So good for you!…
Then you don’t have to worry of anything.
Isn’t that great.
Point is the title makes it sound as if encryption is new for Google and iOS will have default encryption on all iPhone devices, even those that will not be able to upgrade to iOS8. 😛 If you’re going to compare, compare iOS8 upgradable devices to the sane for Android L.
Got your point. Alright.
Then, if all traffic in between devices were encrypted too…
Yes, good point.. Too bad no common smartphone device (including all iphones) are completely safe as long as they use broadband chips in existence today..
If you say “L – Release” fast enough, it sounds an awful lot like Hell Release.
OK, maybe I also added a British accent.
of course Google happily scans, sorts and stores your private info on Gmail which most people including all those celebs complaining about Apple is not aware off:
Google Gmail FAQ:
“Google’s computers process the information in your email for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering targeted related information (such as advertisements and related links)….
we keep back-up copies of data…. even after you have deleted messages from your mailbox .
We also may collect information about the use of your account, such as how much storage you are using, how often you log in and other information related to your registration and use of Gmail. Information displayed or clicked on in your Gmail account (including UI elements, ads, links, and other information) is also recorded.”
—-
Google has ‘robot’ software that scans your gmail, sorts it so that it can target advertising (write about your haemorrhoids to your Aunt Betsy and Google will store it and target Pharma ads at you), it scans your photos and uses image recognition software (is that a Victoria Secret panty on your girlfriends butt?) etc. And it keeps a copy of this and links it to your web searches, your mobile info from Android phones etc to build a profile of you. That’s why Google an ad agency rakes in crazy billions, never before has a company amassed such detail info on people to sell to advertisers.
but of course the supine press ignores all this but relentless attacks apple.
Encryption is irrelevant if your data is being used by google and sold to advertisers.
This is pretty pointless.
It’s also irrelevant if Bono is still able to hack your phone #bonogate
Why would it take them several years to roll out encryption, when it’s already been implemented?
It’s not enabled by default, but anyone can encrypt their phone from within the system settings.
Enabling it by default shouldn’t be hard at all for Google to do.
According to this article seems the encryption capabilities were available 3 years ago on Android.. Just not turned on by default.
http://www.itworld.com/security/437095/google-turn-encryption-default-next-android-version?source=ITWNLE_nlt_today_2014-09-19
Unnecessary Google hating and a very ignorant MDN title. Data encryption is not new to Android phones. Look it up.
Welcome to MDN. You must be new.