Nowadays, OTPs (one-time passwords) are used for logging in or verifying accounts in banking, online shopping, social media, and many other areas. However, if a suspicious app gains permission to read your SMS, the risk of OTP theft could increase. To mitigate this risk, a new SMS OTP Protection feature has been introduced in Android 17.

What is Android's new OTP Security Feature?

According to Google, the SMS OTP Protection feature in Android 17 will prevent apps from easily accessing OTPs. Standard SMS OTPs and WebOTP-related OTPs will be hidden from most apps for about three hours. This is intended to prevent apps that don't need them from seeing the OTP. This means that if you receive an OTP from a bank, payment app, or other service on your phone, not every app will be able to access that SMS immediately.

Why is this feature important?

Nowadays, there are many cases of cyber fraud targeting OTPs. If a suspicious app has permission to read SMS, it could try to access important information contained in your messages.

Android's new protections are designed to mitigate this kind of risk. However, these restrictions won't apply to all apps. The default SMS app, Assistant, and connected companion apps are excluded from this protection.

Will it be available on all Android phones?

This feature is part of Android 17, so when you'll get it will depend on your phone model and software update. Android 17 also brings several other security and privacy improvements.

If the Android 17 update is available on your phone, installing it can be beneficial from a security point of view.

Be careful about OTP

Never share your OTP with anyone. No genuine service asks you to share your OTP over the phone. Also, avoid granting SMS permissions to unknown apps and only install apps from trusted sources.

PC:Rochak Khabre