All Android owners receive free phone upgrade that scans for hidden dangers before apps are installed

GOOGLE has given Android owners a real-time threat detection feature that alerts users like an antivirus software.

The tech giant has injected stricter security into the code of its Play Protect feature, which is designed to protect Android users when sideloading apps from outside the Google Play Store.

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Cyber crooks don’t always rely on the chance Google won’t detect the malicious app they have uploaded to the Play Store.

Instead, they trick unsuspecting Android users into downloading apps from unofficial sources, in a practice known as sideloading.

Despite being just six years old, Play Protect scans 125billion apps for malware each day.

It already scans apps uploaded to the Play Store in real-time.

And it can screen apps if Android users manually action it.

But the latest update to the feature automates the scanning process for sideloaded apps – apps that aren’t from an official source – via a pop-up prompt.

Google will recommend specific apps to be scanned.

The app’s code will be sent through Google Protect’s machine learning infrastructure.

If it finds the app to be “harmful” it will let you know how and block you from installing it.

For example, Google will let you know if an “app can allow unauthorised access to your data or device”.

“Once the real-time analysis is complete, users will get a result letting them know if the app looks safe to install or if the scan determined the app is potentially harmful,” Google wrote in a security blog.

“This enhancement will help better protect users against malicious polymorphic apps that leverage various methods, such as AI, to be altered to avoid detection.”