Earlier this week Apple CEO Tim Cook published a letter to the public promising the company’s fight to keep the customer data private. Now Google has an announcement of its own to make. The firm recently confirmed that the next version of Android, currently dubbed Android L and scheduled to launch sometime this fall, will be more secure out-of-the-box than all prior versions.
“For over three years Android has offered encryption, and keys are not stored off of the device, so they cannot be shared with law enforcement,”a Google spokeswoman told the Washington Post. “As part of our next Android release, encryption will be enabled by default out of the box, so you won’t even have to think about turning it on.”
The move to add encryption out-of-the-box was apparently made to win trust from consumers. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that it’s basically impossible for the company to hand over any iOS 8 data to authorities; the new Android encryption is supposed to apparently offer similar protection and prevent any unauthorized government snooping. Both firms were in the spotlight after Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’S PRISM “back door” access into the world’s largest tech firms, where the government was allegedly snooping on unsuspecting consumers.
Google hasn’t provided a specific launch date for Android L and we’re still awaiting an official name. It’s possible the company will hold some sort of press event to discuss those details and it may also shed more light on this new encryption.
Source: WASHINGTON POST
