Google is introducing new network security protections in Android 17 to strengthen connection privacy, address cellular vulnerabilities, and protect the privacy of users’ home networks.

Android 17 adds support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a new privacy standard that operates in conjunction with private DNS to hide profiling metadata, including visited domain names.

ECH acts as a privacy extension for TLS, the protocol that secures HTTPS connections, encrypting the opening part of the TLS handshake that reveals the contacted hostname via the Server Name Indication (SNI).