Android phones from all over the world are targeted by a last-minute announcement for the people who use them, and this is because an extremely important change is about to take place, and a lot of people will be affected. More precisely, those with older generation Android phones, i.e. any model that does not have Android 7.1.1 installed, will no longer be able to access secure websites with HTTPS certificates starting in 2021, according to Let's Encrypt.
Android phones which have a version older than Android 7.1.1 will be launched without the possibility of accessing these websites because Let's Encrypt, and probably other companies, will block the possibility of predefined signing of certificates for them. Everything will happen on January 11, 2021, when the default signing of certificates will be stopped, and from September 1 it will be completely blocked for those phone models.
Android Phones: WARNING to MILLIONS of People
Android phones who use Firefox as their main browser will still be able to surf the Internet without problems thanks to it, but they will not be able to use applications that access data from secure servers. The biggest problem is that 33.8% of users who use Android phones have a version of the operating system older than Android 7.1.1, and here we are talking about hundreds of millions of people around the world.
“The DST Root X3 certificate we relied on to get us off the ground will expire - on September 1st, 2021. Fortunately, we're ready to stand alone and rely solely on our own root certificate. However, this introduces some compatibility issues. Some software that hasn't been updated since 2016 (around when our root was accepted for many root programs) still doesn't trust our root certificate, ISRG Root X1. In particular, this includes versions of Android prior to version 7.1.1. This means that those older versions of Android will no longer trust certificates issued by Let's Encrypt. Currently, 66,2% of Android devices are running version 7.1 or higher. The remaining 33,8% of Android devices will eventually start receiving certificate errors when users visit sites that have a Let's Encrypt certificate."
Android phones that will be affected by this radical change will need an emergency update to Android 7.1.1, but first it is necessary for the manufacturer to offer it, and then for it to be installed by the users. It is still amazing how many models of the active Android phones now still use such an old version of the operating system, especially since we have now reached Android 11, and Android 12 is already being worked on.
Android phones they will be left without this support without the users being able to do anything, and a lot of people will not understand what is happening with their phone, but they will not be able to find out either, because they will not be able to access Google to find out information either.
