Considering the increasing conversational scams, the American search engine technology company, Google has recently launched two new AI-powered tools which will effectively help in detecting conversational scams on Android devices.
Launch Of New AI-Powered Scam Detection Features for Android
Google informed about the introduction of these new features, having Scam Detection for messages and calls in a Google blog post published on March 4.
The company has built these features on traditional spam protection designed to strengthen defenses against job and delivery scams, which Google will still roll out to users.
Moving ahead, Google claimed that these new tools will go beyond as it has the ability to detect suspicious patterns and deliver real-time warnings throughout a conversation, all while prioritizing user privacy.
The main focus behind the introduction of these tools is to prevent users from getting scammed through more conversational text scams.
Usually, these salcams begin innocently but gradually they manipulate victims into sharing sensitive data, handing over funds or switching to other messaging apps.
Lyubov Farafonova, Product Manager at Google, and Alberto Pastor Nieto, Senior Product Manager at Google are the authors of this post.
In this post he mentioned, they partnered with financial institutions worldwide to better understand the latest advanced and most common scams their customers are facing.
How Does Android Scam Detection for Google Messages Work?
Out of the recently launched features, Scam Detection in Google Messages is the first feature which helps identifying potential scams in real time, even after initial messages are received.
This feature becomes active when suspicious patterns are detected in SMS, MMS and RCS messages from non-contacts.
It gives a warning with the option to dismiss or report and block the sender to the user.
By default the Scam Detection is active with all message processing remaining on-device to protect user privacy.
On the users part, they can choose to report conversations to help reduce spam, with only sender details and recent messages being shared with Google and carriers.
Presently this tool is available in English in the US, UK and Canada, and will soon be expanded to more countries.
How Does Android Scam Detection for Calls Work?
Similar to messages, the second feature which is Scam Detection for calls, processes call audio on-device to protect user privacy.
Please note here that they do not do any recording, storage or sharing of conversation audio or transcription.
Unlike messages, this feature is off by default. It is only applicable to potential scam calls from non-contacts and notifies participants with a beep when enabled.
Earlier Google had a survey which revealed that the Scam Detection alerts have already helped people be more cautious and avoid falling victim to conversational scams.
This feature is already released to US-based English-speaking Phone by Google public beta users on Pixel phones in late 2024.
AI Protection Launch By Google Cloud
Google Cloud launched AI Protection, a new platform-agnostic solution designed to safeguard AI workloads and data across clouds and models on March 5.
With the help with this new solution, security teams will be able to check on AI inventory, secure AI assets, and manage AI threats, such as prompt injection, jailbreak, data loss, malicious URLs and offensive content.
Mandiant Consultants, part of Google Cloud, will offer its services to help organizations assess and implement robust security measures for AI systems and red teaming for AI, according to the Google.
