New warning for Android users.
There are a frightening number of Android phones running a daily risk of infection by serious malware, with those phones owners losing passwords, financial information and sensitive personal data to attackers. And now Google has suddenly added more than 200 million phones to that danger list. Those users now need a new phone.
As reported by Android Authority, “Google is no longer backporting security patches to Android 12 or 12L, as both operating systems have reached end-of-life status. This means that device makers will have to backport security patches on their own if they want to provide security updates to their Android 12 or 12L devices. Few manufacturers have the resources or desire to do this, so if you still have an Android 12 or 12L device, it’s time to upgrade if you value security.”
Google has already drawn a line between Android 13 and anything older, with its Play Integrity API enabling apps to limit features and functionality for phones still running Android 12 or an even older, already retired version of the OS. According to Statcounter, that could mean more than one-third of Android devices are now at risk. With some 3 billion Android devices, that’s a frightening level of exposure.
Android OS versions.
Google isn’t commenting, but Android Authority reports that the company “ended support for Android 12 and 12L as of March 31, 2025… With the Android Security Bulletin for March 2025 being the last bulletin to list patches for those two releases.” To focus minds affected users, that means Android’s critical April fixes to protect phones from known, active attacks are not available for your phone.
The newly vulnerable 200 million Android 12 users a are the top of a scary iceberg, with Lookout reporting as many one billion Android and iPhone devices may now be out of support, leaving a device and the data on it vulnerable to known and unknown exploits.”
Put simply, if you have a phone running Android 12, sort an update as soon as you can. The mobile threat landscape is not getting any safer. The risks are not worth taking.