The new Internet standard adds a layer of protection to your data.
Google introduced platform-wide support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) on Android 17, making it the first major mobile operating system to do so. Jigsaw, a technology incubator within Alphabet, says ECH fills a critical gap in internet privacy. It explains that even when you visit a website with secure HTTP (HTTPS), Internet service providers can still see the domain names of the websites and services you visit and use. This information can be used to create user profiles that companies can use for targeted advertising and that bad actors can use for phishing campaigns.
ECH encrypts the destination website you are visiting from the start. With the standard enabled, ISPs will only see a website’s content delivery network (CDN), like Cloudflare, and the amount of data being moved, but not the website or app you’re actually on. In other words, ECH adds a strong layer of protection to your data and prevents your activities from being tracked. The new Internet standard will be enabled by default on Android 17.
“Closing this privacy gap makes the Internet safer for everyone,” says Jigsaw. However, ECH is not enough to fully protect you. It won’t hide DNS lookups, which is what you call the process of translating a web URL into a numeric IP address that computers can recognize. To do this, you will need to enable encrypted DNS. The standard also does not hide your IP address like a VPN does.
In addition to ECH, Google also recently rolled out other security features to Android 17. One of them is a click-free solution that carriers can use to turn off 2G by default to prevent SMS blasters, which typically rely on the old cellular network to bypass modern spam filters.
