Breaking the Spell: Android’s New 30-Second Safety Brake Stops Screen-Sharing Scammers
Android is expanding its pilot program to combat phone scams in which fraudsters persuade victims to enable screen sharing during a call and open banking or payment applications. Google says it has spent years developing a “multi-layered” defense against mobile fraud—combining AI and security expertise across calls, SMS, and messaging notifications—but attackers continue to adapt, increasingly relying on real-time social engineering pressure during live conversations.
According to Google, one of the most common schemes follows a familiar pattern: criminals call while posing as a bank or another “trusted” institution and insist that the victim enable screen sharing so they can “help resolve an issue.” The victim is then steered to malicious websites, coerced into revealing sensitive information, transferring money, or installing dangerous applications.
To disrupt this scenario, Android has launched a UK pilot that provides in-call protection for financial apps. The mechanism is straightforward: if a user opens a participating financial application while on a phone call and sharing their screen—and the caller’s number is not saved in contacts—the device automatically displays a risk warning. With a single tap, the user can end the call and stop screen sharing. A crucial detail is a built-in 30-second delay before the user can proceed, designed to break the spell of urgency and panic that scammers exploit. Google notes that the feature is supported on devices running Android 11 and newer.
Google reports that the UK pilot has already helped thousands of users terminate suspicious calls that could have cost them significant sums. As a result, the company has expanded the protection to most major UK banks and launched parallel pilots with financial applications in Brazil and India. The safeguards are now also being tested with additional app categories, including peer-to-peer payment services.
The next step is a pilot rollout in the United States: beginning in December 2025, for users of US versions of supported apps, the protection will be introduced for several popular fintech services such as Cash App and banks including JPMorganChase. Google emphasizes that it intends to learn from these pilots and scale similar “safety brakes” in close collaboration with ecosystem partners.
Google also cites survey findings showing that Android users were 58% more likely than iOS users to report not receiving scam SMS messages in the previous week. The survey, conducted in July–August among 5,100 adults who use smartphones daily and have encountered fraud attempts, specifies that the SMS comparison applies to users of the default messaging app.
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