Android L To Be Encrypted By Default

Privacy has been, and continues to be a major issue and topic of discussion these days. Apple has reworked encryption on their iOS devices following with the release of iOS 8 and now Google has also elected to join the party.

According to The Washington Post, Google will start enabling encryption on all Android devices with the release of their next Android version, currently known only as Android L. Encryption has been available on Android since Ice Cream Sandwich but since it was hidden in the settings, many users did not bother.

Now that Google’s forcing encryption on Android L, it’s going to be hard, if not impossible for outsiders to access data stored on a device without the user’s password. A clear downside to this change would be that users will have to use a PIN/passcode to unlock their device all the time.

Android L (or whatever the final codename ends up being) is expected to be released on October 16th next month.

[WSJ]