Android 13 Tries to Make Privacy and Security a No-Brainer

For years, Android’s security and privacy teams have been wrestling the world’s most popular mobile operating system to make it more controllable and updatable while still being open source and easy to deploy. And while scams, malware, and rogue apps are still real threats, the debut of Android 13 at Google’s I/O developer’s conference on Wednesday feels less like triage mode and more like a logical iteration. As Charmaine D'Silva, Android’s director of product management puts it, “This is the release where we bring it all together.”

If anything, the big problem for Android security and privacy now is trying to get users, device makers, and developers to understand and be motivated to use a slew of new and recently released protective features. And after setting so many privacy and security initiatives in motion over the past few years, there's a huge amount for the Android team to maintain and try to get right at any given time.

“We will continue to go deeper, and that’s going to be a continued investment, but the challenge as you go deep is you end up fragmenting experiences, you end up actually confusing users unintentionally,” says Krish Vitaldevara, Android senior director of product management. “That’s a very hard problem to solve, and that’s what we’re going to solve with Android 13.”