Android 15 might put suspicious apps in quarantine to protect your phone

Summary

• Google Play Protect scans Android for malware in real-time, but may occasionally miss infected apps.
• Android 15 could offer a new way to protect devices from misbehaving apps by quarantining them.
• The security measure puts quarantined apps in a silent mode, limiting their activities and interactions with other apps.

Android users have protection against malware thanks to Google Play Protect, which even scans for malware in real-time now. However, it’s not entirely unheard of for it to miss a malware-infected app on occasion. It’s a good thing that Android 15 might give users a new way to protect their devices against misbehaving apps. In the meantime, you can also watch out for the Independent Security Review badge, which lets you know that an app meets industry-wide security and privacy standards.

Reporting for Android Authority, AOSP code expert Mishaal Rahman explains that Android 15 may give users a new way to keep misbehaving apps under control by putting them in quarantine. There is no way users can quarantine the apps manually, even if they use the command line, but the security measure seems to be intended more as an automated half-step between outright removal and the current approach where the system does nothing without strong enough evidence of abuse from the app.

Quarantined apps will still be visible on the home screen and in settings, but the notifications can’t be seen, all app activities will be stopped, and any active windows will be hidden. And the restrictions continue, as the app is unable to ring the device, its services can’t be called on by other apps, and it can’t receive broadcasts from other apps or the system.

Source: Android Authority

New permissions make this possible, but the Play Store isn’t using them yet

Quarantined apps will behave similarly to disabled apps, and the same APIs are used, with the exception that one extra flag is passed. Thanks to the SUSPEND_APPS permission, misbehaving apps are put in quarantine. But a recent update has revealed that the latest QUARANTINE_APPS permission is also involved. Only the system verifier, defined at the OS level, will be able to access this permission, which effectively means the Google Play Store will be the only app with the power to put other apps in quarantine.

Code for the app quarantine feature was first spotted in Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1 late last year, but there is no confirmation of when the feature will reach all Android users. It’s plausible that the feature might not make it to Android 15, but later versions, since the Google Play Store or Google Play Services is not currently requesting the needed permission.

This security measure seems like a step in the right direction, since Google Play still needs to improve on other things. Time will tell what other security measures Google will take to keep your Android device safe.