Google wants to start freezing old apps you forgot you had installed

Every installed app is a potential security and privacy risk, and Google is now rolling out a new feature to help deal with the problem. — dpa

How many apps do you have on your phone? And how many of them have you not used for months? You don't know?

That's exactly the problem – a security problem, in fact.

Every installed app is a potential security and privacy risk, and Google is now rolling out a new feature to help deal with the problem of installed apps waiting to fill up with vulnerabilities as you forget about them.

With its planned "auto-reset feature", Google wants to automatically revoke any permissions you granted to Android apps that you haven't used in months, from location to contacts to calendar or camera. This is already standard with Android 11.

The feature is also useful because unused apps sometimes like to help themselves to your personal data, tracking your habits and building a profile on you, even if you haven't opened them in months or longer.

So say you install an app to scan barcodes and give it permission to your camera access, with the auto-reset feature it won't still be able to use your camera months later if you've stopped using the app.

Since the majority of mobile devices still run on older versions of the operating system, Google is also bringing this security function to smartphones and tablets down to Android 6, according to the official Android developer blog.

The feature is scheduled to come to mobile devices over the Google Play Services app from the beginning of September. Users may still have to activate it in the app permissions settings. – dpa