Following the announcement earlier this month, Google Messages for Android is rolling out enhanced protection to combat spam and scams.
To date, Google Messages offers standard protection to block “spam and links suspected of harm.” Enhanced protection introduces “Advanced detection to prevent spam and scams.” There are three main features at launch.
Scam detection will leverage “Gemini cloud models to assess the context of complex messages and more quickly understand a scammer’s intent when you’re in a conversation with an unknown sender.” Compared to existing on-device detection, this approach is more effective in identifying “new and sophisticated attacks.”
It uses Android’s Private AI Compute feature to encrypt messages and process them in a secure space that is “private to you and inaccessible to anyone, including Google.”
In the meantime, improved link protections Use the on-device Gemini Nano model and real-time web signals to assess whether an unknown link is trustworthy before clicking. This feature is available on the Pixel 10+, Samsung Galaxy S26 series, Z Flip 8, Z Fold 8, and “other select devices.”
The final update redraw warnings to give you more time and more context to “pause before tapping links” sent from numbers not in your contacts.
Enhanced Protection is an optional feature. To enable it, go to Google Messages settings > Protection & security. Instead of an on/off toggle, you’ll find three options:
- Improved protection
- Standard protections
- No protection (not recommended)
We see that this is available with the latest Google Messages beta (build 20261020_00_RC00).
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