Android 12: Old Mobile Radio Standard as a Gateway – Here’s How You Can Permanently Disable 2G Connections

Not only have smartphones and operating systems developed rapidly, but mobile phone standards have also made great strides in the last three decades, with 4G and 5G playing a particularly important role in this country. But because smartphones need to be backward compatible as much as possible, 2G is still supported. With android 12 you can disable support for the old standard, and maybe you should.

The abbreviation G may be associated with something else due to the pandemic, but 2G, 3G, 4G and probably the best known 5G are abbreviations for mobile phone standards. The vast majority of smartphones still support 2G for the widest possible compatibility around the world, although it has long since been turned off in many countries. But the standard dates back to 1991 and by no means offers the security and encryption of modern standards. Therefore, it can actually become a gateway for an attack.

With android 12 you have the option to disable 2G support to protect yourself from unnecessary gateway attacks. This is necessary because smartphones can still fall back to the other standards if 5G or 4G reception is poor.

So you can disable 2G
If you want to disable this, find the following setting: Settings -> Network and Internet -> SIM and then find the sub-item to use 2G, which you simply have to turn off. It can be called a little differently for each smartphone, so check for yourself if you have this point.

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