Google Announces Anti-Theft Technology Inspired by Mobile Phone Theft Problem in Brazil

This Wednesday, Google announced new technology, powered by artificial intelligence and inspired by Brazil, that will allow Android phones to detect theft and activate preventative security measures.

Theft Lock technology detects a specific sequence of events to determine that a theft is occurring and automatically locks access to the phone to prevent attackers from accessing the victim’s apps and financial information.

“We invest a lot in security and privacy, it’s fundamental to what we do,” Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke said at a roundtable on the sidelines of the annual Google I/O event where the news was announced . “We want to develop technology to better combat theft and fraud,” he continued.

The problem of phone theft in Brazil inspired this process, and Android ecosystem president Samir Samat, also present at the roundtable, explained why.

“Brazil had a big influence on the creation of Theft Lock features,” he noted. “I went to Brazil and discussed it with consumers and the government, who said it was an important topic and a big problem.”

Statistics released by the team show that a phone is stolen every five minutes in Sao Paulo and every six minutes in London. In Brazil, Burke said, the process typically involves someone riding a bicycle or motorcycle, grabbing the phone, shaking the user’s hand, and running away.

This is the sequence that the AI ​​recognizes: an unlocked phone that is in use and is subjected to a sudden impact followed by rapid movement (running or in a vehicle) triggers the lock.

Burke noted that tests indicate very few false positives and that this functionality will be available across the entire Android universe, not just in the upcoming Android 15 version.

But it is in the next iteration of the operating system that additional capabilities will appear to protect against theft and fraud. One of them is the creation of a virtual private space inside the phone (private space), which allows sensitive applications to be placed in a space that only the legitimate user has access to.

Measures will also be taken to combat the growing number of scams affecting users, such as attacks in which third parties impersonate a bank, send a fraudulent link and gain access to a person’s screen. Android will hide temporary passwords and codes sent in messages to prevent attackers from seeing them on shared screens.

The initial presentation at Google I/O also demonstrated future functionality made possible by artificial intelligence: the ability of the system to detect in the middle of a conversation that it is a scam and encourage the user to hang up.

Google’s annual 2024 I/O event was all about the company’s advances in artificial intelligence, which is integrated into everything from search in the search engine to documents in Google Workspace, Gmail and the Android mobile operating system.