The security of our personal data is undoubtedly one of the biggest problems of our time. The problem is so great today that even if you don’t use a smartphone, computer, or social media, your information is probably not safe. However, if you’re not on a comprehensive tech detox and you use an Android phone, you may want to read our news more carefully. According to a video released recently, Android’s App pinning feature has a potential flaw that could expose credit card information. Here are the details…

How to Protect Your Credit Card Information from Android’s App Pinning Flaw

If you’re an iOS user like me, or an Android user who doesn’t know about it, the app pinning feature allows you to lock an app to your screen so that only that app can be used. This can be useful for a variety of situations, such as giving someone else your phone to use, but you only want them to be able to use a specific app, etc. If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of this feature before, it’s probably because it’s not automatically turned on for Android devices.

However, according to recent information, a flaw in the app pinning feature could be problematic in very specific use cases and could lead to the theft of your credit card information. Don’t worry too much, though. To exploit the flaw, an attacker would need to physically access the victim’s device and have them enable the following settings:

  • App pinning
  • “Ask for PIN before unpinning”
  • “Require device unlock for NFC”

Once these settings are enabled, the attacker could pin an app that contains credit card information, such as Google Pay. Then, if the victim closes the app, the attacker could use NFC to read the credit card information from the device. I understand that this issue is a bit complex. Fortunately, you can watch the video for a better understanding.

Of course, it’s easy to avoid this specific issue. All you need to do is go to the settings on your Android phone and turn off the app pinning feature. To do this, follow these steps:

To disable app pinning on Android, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Tap on Security or Security & location.
  3. Tap on Advanced.
  4. Tap on App pinning.
  5. Toggle the Use app pinning switch to Off.

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