With the increase in cybercrimes and growing online bugs, users of android OS might want to upgrade their Android phones before visiting large portions of the secure web. According to sources, Certificate Authority Let’s Encrypt is issuing a warning to phone phones running Android versions before 7.1.1 Nougat. It won’t trust its root certificate starting in 2021, locking them out of many secure websites.
It is a severe issue for the old generation of devices who haven’t been upgraded yet. The organization will reportedly stop default cross-signing for the certificate that enables this functionality on January 11th, 2021. and the company will drop the completely cross-signing partnership entirely on September 1st of that year.
Sources have given a partial workaround for this by installing Firefox Mozilla, a partner in Let’s Encrypt. Then by using its certificate store but that won’t help with rival clients or functionality beyond browsers. However, dropping the support for old androids could be a sore point given Android update policies.
According to sources, about 33.8 percent of Android users on Google Play run a version older than 7.1. and some hardware vendors have cut off support for their devices early. It isn’t uncommon for Android vendors to offer few updates in previous years. Some devices, typically budget phones, would even be stuck with their shipping OS.
However, Samsung and other Android makers are now committing to three years of OS updates. It won’t, however, change the reality for many people with older hardware. And there may be few recourses if you don’t and are not willing to use Firefox. Even though many other sites will keep working, the inconsistent support could be a hassle and a significant obstacle at worst.
So it is recommended for the user to upgrade their phones to the latest Android OS. If one wants to use many of the websites on the world wide web with secure access, this is the only choice.
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