Restart your Galaxy phone now.
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Android is under attack. Multiple Google warnings this year have highlighted a worsening threat landscape and this month’s update is no different. Several exploited chipset flaws are finally fixed, with a “critical” new vulnerability also patched.
This has prompted new media alerts that “everyone using Android must restart their phones now as ‘critical’ warning issued.” The actual advice is to action a reboot on your phone when you “spot a systems update and install it” to ward off attacks.
In reality, that advice mixes up two separate warnings. You should check if your phone has received and installed the latest Android update. That will initiate a reboot as part of the process, either quickly if the update is “seamless” or more slowly if not.
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But there is also advice to restart your smartphone anyway, to keep it more secure from attacks. According to Samsung, you should “restart your Galaxy phone” today.
“Make restarting your Galaxy phone a daily habit,” the company tells all its users. This can “prevent problems with your Galaxy phone,” and “if your phone suddenly freezes or your phone is too slow, try restarting your phone first.”
Doing this daily is not really necessary. Even America’s NSA only suggested users “turn devices off and on weekly” to help keep them protected. And in the real world, most users only restart when they have to, either to unfreeze a phone or install an update.
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Restarting phones was also thrust into the headlines when Apple and then Google added an auto-restart to phones locked and unused for three days. This restores devices to the before first unlock state, which is more secure and better protects a phone against physical (cable) and unsecured wireless attacks.
You can find details (if you need them) on rebooting your Galaxy device here. You can also now do this automatically, with a recommended “auto-optimize daily” option that meets Samsung’s “daily” advice. It certainly won’t do you or your phone any harm.
In the meantime, the headlines telling you to restart actually mean you should check for an update. If your phone is no longer receiving those updates — and hundreds of millions are not, then restarting it won’t help. It’s time for an upgrade.