Pixel and Galaxy Owners Should Enable This New Android Anti-Theft Feature

Lock screens are a good way to protect your data, but thieves stealing your smartphone when it's unlocked (or after seeing your passcode), and then resetting everything in just a tap is still a real security risk. Apple deals with this vulnerability using its Stolen Device Protection feature, and now, in Android 15, Google has a similar feature called Identity Check.

Identity Check ensures strangers out in public can't change your Android smartphone's account settings without first passing a secondary biometric authentication. First, you set up one or more trusted locations, like your home. Then, if someone outside of one of those locations has your phone and tries to access your passwords, change your PIN, or disable the Find My Device feature, they'll need to pass a biometric lock first.

The feature is first rolling out on Pixel devices and any Samsung Galaxy device using One UI 7. But as is the case with most new Android features, it will slowly start to trickle out to other devices as well, as more manufactures update their own software. According to a Google blog, other manufactures will add support "later this year."

Identity Check's protections are pretty robust, gating away settings like resetting your smartphone, changing the screen lock, creating a new fingerprint ID, disabling the Find My Device feature, adding a new Google account, accessing developer options, and accessing passwords and passkeys in the Password Manager.

A major difference between Android's Identity Check and Apple's Stolen Device Protection is the time delay. Apple basically blocks you from changing any important setting while in an unknown location until you've waited for an hour first. Perhaps a tad too frustrating, but that hour can give someone enough time to remotely wipe your device. Android would perhaps do well to follow suit.

For now, you'll have to enable Identity Check manually. Head over to Settings > Google account > All services > Theft Protection. Here, enable the Use Identity Check feature.

Here, you can also click the Manage button to add trusted locations like your workspace or your home. Disabling the feature requires you to either authenticate using biometrics or by logging in to your Google account.

Along with this update, Google is also rolling out its AI-powered Theft Detection Lock to all supported devices running Android 10 or higher (the feature was released last year for Pixel users). This feature detects when a smartphone is forcibly taken away from you, using data from the smartphones built-in sensors, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more. You can enable it under Settings > Google account > All services > Theft protection > Theft Detection Lock.

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