Hi,
Does anybody else have an issue turning off Google Play Protect?
I’m not able to turn off “Google Play Protect” on my Android phone. Every time I try to toggle it off, it just ignore it.
I don’t need to use this feature on my Android phone, because I already have a paid Antivirus installed on my phone. I don’t want Google scanning my third-party APKs. This is something really annoying not being able to turn this off.
Any ideas?
Thank you
… but you have no issue with an additional 3rd party doing the same?
Anyway, AV apps don’t really make sense, especially not on Android.
Best case scenario: they are useless, worst case: they are actually malware and/or collecting your data.
I don’t know why you cannot disable Play Protect but I would suggest uninstalling your AV app and manually checking your 3rd party .apks at VirusTotal
@Valynor That’s my point exactly. I don’t think this feature “Play Protect” helps at all. Maybe is just there to collect Data.
Play Protect does help because it is part of the OS and has the necessary permissions to actually do something in case it finds malware.
Google’s business is selling ads so yeah, your phone is going to collect some data and send it to Google even if you opt out of everything. If you don’t like that Graphene OS is probably the best solution.
Play Protect is actually useful though (IMHO).
@Valynor I think I will give GrapheneOS a try, Thank you for the recommendation.
Google already has privileged access to your device and can see your installed apps, etc.
If you really want an AV, you better use a malware scanner like Hypatia.
please don’t. There is realy no point in third party AVs these days, paid or not. They are more often infostealers and not actually useful. Every major consumer OS has build-in AV like google play protect, windows defender, Xprotect, etc. I really recommend you stick with those.
might be good to mention you can do this in automated form using MVT
There is no native app that does this, didn’t VT had an app?
no.
As @Lukas mentions, Play Protect is the only scanner on Android with the proper privileges to scan all the installed apps on your phone. A third party anti-virus does not have the required privileges without root to be able to achieve the same level of access like Play Protect.
Also, in my personal opinion, you made a big mistake by paying for an anti-virus. I would suggest just using the Android permissions instead, and being smart with how you get your apps (don’t download random apps from the Play Store, don’t download outdated apps, don’t grant apps every permission etc)
By utilising Android perms, for example, you can just deny a malicious app from accessing your photos or videos even if it wants to.
It can be irritating to be conscious all the time, but think before granting a permission. A calculator does not need access to your contacts, for example.
All apps can read all other app apks and libraries.
Play Protect afaik doesn’t have any special access to actually read app userdata files.
@ph00lt0 LoL 
Perfect Illustration.
But, being a system app, won’t it have more privileges than user apps?
@bqfls
being a system app doesn’t implicitly grant it special permissions
