More than one billion Android smartphones worldwide are now exposed to heightened cybersecurity risks after Google confirmed that devices running Android 12 or older no longer receive security patches, according to Android distribution data cited by Moneycontrol.
The move has left an estimated 42.1 per cent of Android devices vulnerable to new malware and spyware threats. Latest platform distribution figures show that only 57.9 per cent of Android phones are running Android 13 or newer, meaning everything below that threshold is no longer protected by system-level security updates.
Phones launched in 2021 or earlier are among the most affected, and the situation has seen little improvement over the past year. As a result, roughly one billion Android users remain on…