---
title: "How Something Meant to Protect Your Mobile Device is Being Used to Phish You | Phish Protection"
description: "Since mobile devices are essentially computers, it didn’t take long to figure out they needed to be protected like computers."
image: "https://phishprotection.com/og/blog/how-something-meant-to-protect-your-mobile-device-is-being-used-to-phish-you.png"
canonical: "https://phishprotection.com/blog/how-something-meant-to-protect-your-mobile-device-is-being-used-to-phish-you/"
---

Quick Answer

Since mobile devices are essentially computers, \_it didn’t take long to figure out they needed to be protected like computers\_. That's especially true given how frequently users download apps from the app store onto their mobile devices.

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![Phish Protection blog post image](https://media.mailhop.org/phishprotection/images/2020/02/what-is-phishing-9431.jpg) 

Since mobile devices are essentially computers, _it didn’t take long to figure out they needed to be protected like computers_. That’s especially true given how frequently users download apps from the app store onto their mobile devices.

One example of mobile protection is [Google Play Protect](https://www.android.com/play-protect/). _Google Play Protect is Google’s built-in malware protection for Android devices_. When you download an app from the Google Playstore, Google Play Protect automatically scans your device and makes sure your apps and everything else are safe. Sounds pretty good.

Users place a lot of trust in Google Play Protect, and unfortunately, that trust is being used against you to get you to lower your defenses to a phishing attack. According to a recent article on [Bleeping Computer](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/phishing-attack-disables-google-play-protect-drops-anubis-trojan/), “Android users are targeted in a phishing campaign that will infect their devices with the **Anubis banking Trojan** that can steal financial information from more than 250 banking and shopping applications. The campaign uses a devious method to get the potential victims to install the malware on their devices: it asks them to enable Google Play Protect while actually disabling it after being granted permissions on the device.”

Did you catch that? Google Play Protect is enabled by default. So, _when the hackers ask you if you want to enable it, they are actually disabling it_, which means you’re no longer protected. Somewhere in every successful **phishing attack**, the victim has to be tricked into cooperating with the hacker.

![What is phishing](https://media.mailhop.org/phishprotection/images/2020/02/what-is-phishing-9431.jpg) 

Continuing from the article, “once the Android smartphone or tablet is compromised, Anubis will start harvesting a list of installed applications to compare the results against a list of targeted applications. Once an application has been identified, _Anubis overlays the original application with a fake login page to capture the user’s credentials_.” You almost don’t have a chance. Almost.

Sophisticated attacks like these, especially against mobile devices, are why you need email security like that available from [Phish Protection](/). Phish Protection is cloud based. Why is that important? _It’s important because it means all your emails are first sent to Phish Protection to be scanned for malicious content before they ever reach your inbox_. And it also means it protects ALL of your devices, including all of your mobile devices.

_Phish Protection requires no hardware, no software and no maintenance. It sets up in 10 minutes and works with all email services_. Try it risk free for 30 days and you won’t have to worry about how clever hackers are.

## Topics

[ Phishing ](/tags/phishing/) 

![Brad Slavin](https://media.mailhop.org/phishprotection/images/authors/brad-slavin.jpg) 

[ Brad Slavin ](/authors/brad-slavin/) 

General Manager

Founder and General Manager of DuoCircle. Product strategy and commercial lead across DuoCircle's 2,000+ customer base.

[LinkedIn Profile →](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradslavin) 

## Protect your inbox from phishing attacks

Real-time email security with 60-day free trial. No credit card required.

[Start Free Trial](https://portal.duocircle.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=101&brand=phishprotection) [View Pricing](/pricing/) 

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