Cybersecurity

Android P in depth: An up-close look at what's new with security

Starting with Android P, an app won't be able to access your camera, microphone, or most of its sensors while it's running in the background — unless it makes it perfectly clear to you that it's doing so.

This is basically a preventative measure to make sure bad apps aren't able to abuse legitimate permissions they've been granted. The way it'll work is this:

Whenever an app is in the background and idle, the hardware won't deliver any data to it from the camera, mic, or sensors — even if it tries to check in with any of those sources.

If an app has a valid reason for accessing one of those elements in the background, it'll have to create a foreground process to do it. In layman's terms, that means you as the user will see a notification anytime that's occurring.