Fraudulent schemes in messengers have reached a record scale. Over the past year, Americans lost $16.6 billion due to digital deception. Nearly 200 thousand people reported to the FBI about fraudulent attacks and sender spoofing. More than $470 million was stolen through conventional SMS, according to FTC data. In response, Google has decided to enhance protection for Android users using artificial intelligence.
Prior to the launch of Android 16, Google announced the expansion of the AI-based system. It can now identify various frauds from cryptocurrency scams and fake transactions to bogus technical support, lotteries, and service disconnection threats. The analysis algorithms operate locally, ensuring data privacy without transmitting it to the cloud. Google emphasizes that the correspondence remains encrypted, especially in RCS chats with thorough protection.
Google reports that Android now detects around 2 billion suspicious messages monthly. These include not only mass scams but also phishing site links and sophisticated social engineering schemes that can develop over weeks or months. The most perilous are Pig Butchering schemes, disguising fraud as romantic or investment communication. Perpetrators build trust over time before extorting significant sums or leading victims into debt.
Warning: Scam Detection (Google)