Scams are more prevalent and sophisticated than ever, posing a serious threat even to those who consider themselves vigilant. Thankfully your phone has been picking up some skills to keep you that little bit safer — two more major features have now arrived for Google Pixel phone owners.
Google has started rolling out Live Scam Detection to the Pixel Phone app, while an upgraded version of the Play Protect system will help detect and report any scammy Google Play apps in real time. However only the latter will be making its way to non Pixel phones, as far as we know.
Live Scam Detection was announced back at Google I/O in May, and is powered by Google’s Gemini AI. The idea is that Gemini will listen out for “conversation patterns commonly associated with scams” — prompting you with audio and haptic alerts when it detects them. Your phone will then show a “Likely Scam” warning claiming that “Suspicious activity detected for this call”.
The screen will then give you the option to end the call, or mark the call as not being a scam. Though you should only do that if you’re 100% sure that the call is legitimate. So I doubt you’ll be doing that very often.
Google promises that Live Scam Detection doesn’t record or transcribe conversations to your device or any Google server, and is switched off by default. It’s also rolling out as a beta to Pixels 6 through 9 in the U.S. right now, and only covers the English-language version of Google’s phone app.
Google Play Protect’s live threat detection is built to actively seek out harmful apps on your phone — analyzing them for suspicious behavior in real time. The goal here isn’t to spot the obviously malicious apps, which are flagged either on the Play Store or when you download them. This feature will continuously look for signs of malice, and apps that initially lie dormant in an attempt to bypass existing security features.
All the work is done by Android’s Private Compute Core, which helps keep your data secure and alerts you if any suspicious activity has been detected. Currently the feature is rolling out to Pixel 6 phones and newer, and is confirmed to be coming to other Android phones “in the coming months” — including those from Lenovo, OnePlus, Oppo and Nothing.
Scams have been ramping up recently, and will no doubt explode over the Black Friday and holiday seasons — as scammers try to take advantage of people looking for a bargain. Be sure to check out our tips on how to avoid those scams, especially if you’re looking for larger items like home appliances. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is and if someone calls claiming to be from the bank make sure you hang up and call the bank back on their official number.
