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WSJ: Apps Go Too Far In Sharing Your Info To Third Parties

A list of popular Phone spyware. http://blogs.wsj.com/wtk-mobile/

boogieTilt said:
A list of popular Phone spyware. http://blogs.wsj.com/wtk-mobile/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
(Bump)
CategoryUtility
PlatformAndroid
Author / PublisherZedge
TypeFree
Has a privacy policy?Yes, in the app and on the website.
The Journal tested 101 popular smartphone apps to see what data about the phones, their users, and their locations they gathered and revealed to others. The Journal also reviewed what information the app tells users it will collect, and whether it has a privacy policy. Here is a summary of those findings.
Explicitly Asks Permission to Access
Read Contact Data (access data in your address book)
Read Internet's history and bookmarks (Web browsing information)
Full internet access (Can send data out about you)
Read phone state and identity (access unique IDs on your phone)
Read system log files (access to files on how you use the phone and apps)
Coarse (network-based) location (based on Wi-Fi and cell phone towers)
Fine (GPS) location (based on global positioning system)
Sends to Third Parties
Phone ID
Zedge says the application requests to read and write contact data in order to set contact ringtones, and that it does not store this information.
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[GUIDE] Guide to the understanding of internal memory

Hi all, is a long time that I was determined to make this guide, which talks a little bit of memory and a backup, but not in the traditional way, there are many guides who speak backup and restore on the forum, this guide aims to clarity on what is davero save and restore on Android, and quite often emerging from years of windows, to many it is not clear the system, which is both simple and ingenious.
In fact few people know that if a system Android is configured correctly, we could bring the system exactly as we had no need for any backup, or rather save only minimal data.
In fact, Android is designed precisely so that in case of hard reset is possible to recover most of our data assolutament without saving anything.
How can you say? A little cloud, and thanks to google, thanks to some extraordinary system that we have at hand.
It is to make an introduction, some phones like the nexus s, the dual optimus, the galaxy's have a partition of internal memory which is viewed a bit like the SD of the other external phones, as a general rule that says of this guide is also valid for them, but keep in mind that the external removable SD, where present (in no nexus) is used only for photo papers and films, while the rest is used for internal storage.
We must first begin to understand WHAT and WHERE you install to get through to understand OCSA we can restore and what may be unnecessary or less important to be clear I AM NOT SAYING THAT I DO NOT GO BACK FACTS, a spare copy of every thing is fine it, but is often used even when not needed and when and how best to act otherwise.
We begin to see what and where you save files on Android:
THE SYSTEM
And 'the directory / system of our phone and also has a dedicated partition in the internal memory that contains all the firmware "base" includes all pre-installed applications, widgets, etc. keyboards.
We can find it in / system / app
\
THE APK
They are the real applications, we download and install an application in the market is. Apk
These are saved in order to function in a precise post system and is usually the directory / data / app on your phone
THE DATA AND THE CACHE OF APK
It 's the hardest thing to understand, an application, and is used when the install saves a certain amount of data that can be variable depending on the application itself (from a few kb to a few megs), many applications do not even have to save data, but others do and are represented by such preferences that we ourselves, as if spuntiamo an option rather than another, or choosing a layout type rather than another if the applicazionelo allows, or if the level of bailouts it is a game, in short everything you need to find an application as we have decided to appear and then leave the options configured to our liking so.
These data are stored by the applications to be found in / data / data is saved for every apk a special folder with the data reported in the application itself.
The caches are special types of files used temporarily or often (usually a few kb), which serve to ensure that the application can draw from in order to make things faster, or temporary files that are dynamically replaced.
We can easily delete data and cache any application, they will be recreated as soon as we open the application itself, of course, the application will restart with the default options, and if it is a play off-line again from the first level and so on.
ADDITIONAL DATA (also called extra cache)
Some applications, especially games or navigation systems require a lot of data to work and would occupy much memory required for this and once opened the same applicazzione to download them from the network and in some cases is asked whether to save them on SD or reminiscent internal, usually because the internal memory is precious, they end up on SD if there is no choice in the application.
These data are usually very full-bodied and are also represented by hundreds of MB and then creates a folder easily recognizable on our external SD card (in the case of phones with internal SD is also used for internal storage SD).
For example, games of GLU create a folder named our Glu SD, and a subfolder with the name of the game and so on.
Other lighter applications such as applications that have widgets that give the possibility to download wallpaper or weather, etc., going to save this data in the default folder Sd / Android / data / nomedell 'application, including maps of maps end up here , and all additional data from applications that do not create specific folders on the SD
Some system folders on the SD are dedicated or created by applications to files that we download on the network, or via bluetooth etc..
For example, the browser downloads its files usually in the / downloads available on the SD filoe we download via tapatalk go tapatalk download folder etc..
It's pretty easy to understand and see if an application has created a folder on our SD (internal phones that have internal storage) and figure out what application it is.
PHOTO AND VIDEO DOCUMENTS
These vendgono all usually stored on external SD (on all phones that have), and then will abbastqnz easy to find a manager with the folder where files are usually saved We take the pictures with the camera is the DCIM folder where classical inside will also find all the photos and video that we made.
The documents that we save where we can save more than we like and we should
CONTACTS AND CALENDAR
We have different sections of an Android phone, at least 3 as we have different agendas and calendars (also install applications via the market)
See you in detail what is best to use and how best to handle this very important aspect
the manufacturer of the phone book
The book google
the rubric of sim
calendar and google calendar
Any calendars or calendar entries installed by the market
we can use them all at once or one by one or only one of them depending on how we organize ourselves, usually the rubrics of the managers are not synchronized on a bilateral basis, but only through software provided by the manager himself, so for the calendar, then a Android phone is very practical and comfortable to use google's address book and calendar to google, it also allows us to merge contacts with our friends on facebook twitter etc..
In any case, when we save a contact address book on gmail, it will immediately be synchronized via internet and then we could do with a PC to organize as best we believe our contact, just go into google contacts with our account and do all the goole changes we want.
We can synchronize a directory with security provided by the program manager, who usually also allows synchronization of photos and documents.
Thanks to the synchronization, we can safely delete contacts of SIM if we are double, so as to make it easier to visulizzazione of contacts and that will not recur in the book as a text message or MMS cinviamo
Even the calendar is the same thing, we can synchronize the calendar with a google account and any other event that we mark will be synchronized on the network.
For photos and documents google video offers everything there is to offer as our movies youtube, picasa for photos and
documents for documents.
WHAT HAPPENS IF IT IS A HARD RESET OR IF YOU CHANGE ROM
Sometimes we have to do a hard reset, or simply want to change ROM, when we do this we delete EVERYTHING THAT'S 'ON THE PHONE.
In the case of hard reset will erase all data downloaded applications and cache LESS DATA ON SD that is not touched and is not necessary to do so (in the folder Android patre secure).
When cambaimo ROM is also overwritten the system.
WHAT 'WHAT AND NO NEED TO RESTORE
We finally got to the point, but without these explanations is impossible to understand what really, it's time to save, restore, when and how.
So we come to the point.
all we have synchronized the phone with google we find in our account as soon forgive and sincronizziamo google account
So our contacts are safe and reappear as soon forgive our google account.
So even if we happen synchronized photos or documents, our photos are on picasa web albums and we can see them on goole + documents of our documents and just put the application or any application that we use to synchronize documents.
The apk should almost always always put them back from the shop, just have AppBrain to get a list of applications that you had.
E 'be noted that on some phones, notably HTC phones and those with CyanogenMod also held official record of applications that we had on the phone, so if you own a HTC, when we finish the wizard and put the google account PROCEDURE TO TOUR the market automatically restores all applications that we had.
This only works if you configure automatic rièristino phones and our account teamite start the wizard, is the sense of HTC, both on cm7 Rom.
If you do not have an HTC phone call or not cm7 may be easier to track the applications you were using AppBrain is using the web market puts everything back in 5 minutes.
If you do not format the SD it has all the data we had previously, and then also our photos of the documents and additional applications, if you must format it just a copy paste to put everything easily.
WHAT REALLY NEED TO RESTORE WITH BACKUP?
Contacts: no use because they are synchronized by many
Photos and video documents: safe on the SD but you can also synchronize them with special programs or directly with google
The APK: all are small and wireless, with the web market is fast putting them back
Additional data: they are safely stored on SD and on some phones are restored by themselves (HTC, Cm7)
Application data: for maggtior part not because it is unimportant configurations, the limit if you play a game off line as angry birds to not lose any past levels
Email: do not serve because they are safe on our account
MMS or SMS: If yes but only if they are important, and if you still saved on the sim are safe, however if you want you can use tiuanium
As you can see Android is structured so that even if we lose everything, a huge part of what is lost can be recovered facilemte and therefore no need to do regular backups or restore colossal, just restore the minimum for the system EXACTLY as before.
Android gives each type of data a precise place to stay in your system if you just want to save only the data of insertions apply only to save the corresponding folder that is located in / data / data and overwrite it with root permissions or replace it.
The same is true for all other things.

[Q]App permissions; Goolge play store vs. installed on phone

I've noticed lately that permissions on the Google Play Store vs installed on your phone are different.
For example: on Google Play Store calendar apps would have permissions of;
Uses calendar information and Uses contact information
or
Device and app history, use calendar information, use contact information, use one or more of call log, use one or more of files on the device, allow app to view info about Wi-Fi networking, allow the app to determine phone number and ID
but after installing it on phone it would have permissions of:
Read phone status and ID, Read call log, Read your contacts, Add or Modify calendar events and send e-mail to guests without owner's knowledge, Read calendar events and confidential information, Modify or delete the contents of your SD card
does anyone know why this happens ? My stock calendar has the same permissions.
Is it a Google adding these permissions? Called Google and they said that the developer needs to update their permissions list. Not happy with some of these permission. Does anyone have a calendar app that does not have these additonal permissions ?

pepo2k said:
I've noticed lately that permissions on the Google Play Store vs installed on your phone are different.
For example: on Google Play Store calendar apps would have permissions of;
Uses calendar information and Uses contact information
or
Device and app history, use calendar information, use contact information, use one or more of call log, use one or more of files on the device, allow app to view info about Wi-Fi networking, allow the app to determine phone number and ID
but after installing it on phone it would have permissions of:
Read phone status and ID, Read call log, Read your contacts, Add or Modify calendar events and send e-mail to guests without owner's knowledge, Read calendar events and confidential information, Modify or delete the contents of your SD card
does anyone know why this happens ? My stock calendar has the same permissions.
Is it a Google adding these permissions? Called Google and they said that the developer needs to update their permissions list. Not happy with some of these permission. Does anyone have a calendar app that does not have these additonal permissions ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well first of all when installing anything from the play store the permissions are simplified so it wont show all of them vs when you install it on your phone it would have more. Also there are many calenders avaible and each has diffrent permissions so you would have to look and see what one would be good for you.
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Hope this helps
A_Bunny
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Different permissions...
pepo2k said:
I've noticed lately that permissions on the Google Play Store vs installed on your phone are different.
For example: on Google Play Store calendar apps would have permissions of;
Uses calendar information and Uses contact information
or
Device and app history, use calendar information, use contact information, use one or more of call log, use one or more of files on the device, allow app to view info about Wi-Fi networking, allow the app to determine phone number and ID
but after installing it on phone it would have permissions of:
Read phone status and ID, Read call log, Read your contacts, Add or Modify calendar events and send e-mail to guests without owner's knowledge, Read calendar events and confidential information, Modify or delete the contents of your SD card
does anyone know why this happens ? My stock calendar has the same permissions.
Is it a Google adding these permissions? Called Google and they said that the developer needs to update their permissions list. Not happy with some of these permission. Does anyone have a calendar app that does not have these additonal permissions ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google has simplified permissions so only the ones that may be violating your privacy are shown. If you scroll down on the bottom of google play you will see something like Show permissions or similar. Click that and I think it will show you all permissions.

What are the repercussions of removing contacts provider in Android?

Personally I think the contacts provider (and other providers)in Android is a huge security risk. Every app and it's brother wants full access to your contacts so they can mine them for usable information. This can be just to add easy links to friends or to spam them with advertisements or offers to identity theft.
I've started using a pim manager that does not access Androids contact provider, calendar provider , tasks or other providers in it's operations.(And I really wish it was open source)
I have already removed the Google sync apks from my device and have removed contacts, calendar in the past. But not the providers.
It might cause some badly written apps to crash.
But I can't forsee any other serious problems.
Ideas? Thoughts?

Honestly sounds like a good idea..
Myself I decided to go for a while without any gapps and any other "store" installed on my phone.
My contacts are imported from a .vcf file which i update manually when needed.
I also have installed AFWall+ and i blocked the internet access to pretty much all the other apps including the system ones.. (everything i could get away with basically )
This could be a solution as well but it's rudimentary one at the moment.
nutpants said:
Personally I think the contacts provider (and other providers)in Android is a huge security risk. Every app and it's brother wants full access to your contacts so they can mine them for usable information. This can be just to add easy links to friends or to spam them with advertisements or offers to identity theft.
I've started using a pim manager that does not access Androids contact provider, calendar provider , tasks or other providers in it's operations.(And I really wish it was open source)
I have already removed the Google sync apks from my device and have removed contacts, calendar in the past. But not the providers.
It might cause some badly written apps to crash.
But I can't forsee any other serious problems.
Ideas? Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I already don't have Google apps on my device.
Everything blocked with afwall+ using profiles so things only get net when I'm using them on the net.
Fdroid is where I get 90% of my software and from the internet for much of the other 10%
I have a old phone with nothing on it personal at all. Which has play store for the 3 or 4 paid apps I need, it does updates for them and a few free ones. I copy the apks over to my daily driver.
I constantly hound developers on play store to support offline devices and not to implement features that break the app when there is no internet. Even app I don't use lol.
(I have 2 tablets and far too many old phones.only two devices are online(some are local lan only))
Someone should start a offline foundation. But being online it might be ridiculous..

I too removed contacts by using /system/app mover from f-droid. It was unintended as I wanted them as a user application but they wouldn't work like this and the icon vanished, that was fine with me for a long time. The other day I wanted contacts for signal (and telegram also won't work without them). I restored the application files from a backup,
For reference in /system/app/ the missing files were
SecContacts.apk
SecContactsProvider.apk
Other contacts programs like Simple Contacts can't run without a system permission called com.android.contacts and without those files in /system/app the permission doesn't get created at boot. The result being that no contact creation is possible.
What I would really like is a modified version of the system app that passes contacts data to the calling program depending on individual contact entry permissions with regard to each calling app; one list for telegram, another for signal etc. I gather that recent android versions above 6.0.0 have functionality to check calling application certificates so something along these lines should be possible. For earlier versions it might be necessary to switch between multiple contacts databases before starting the messaging app and also removing it from the autoboot list.
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/permissions/defining

Quota and Functionality Questions related to Device Backup

I am confused about inconsistences between Device Backup on two different Pixel phones:
On my old Pixel phone, the Backup app says the backup will use Google One storage, so I do not have it turned on.
On my new Pixel phone, the Backup app doesn't mention Google One. In fact, it explicitly states that the device backup will not count towards "Drive" storage.
I'm not sure the new Pixel phone is fully patched (just took it out of the box) so it's possible the software hasn't been updated to reflect the Google One service.
I have the following questions:
Does the device backup count towards a Google storage quota or not?
Is there a difference between Google One and Google Drive?
On both devices, the device backup states that the information is encrypted before being uploaded, but it is not clear whether the backup is inaccessible by Google (can Google decrypt the backup)?
The device backup states that it will backup: apps, app data, call history, contacts, device settings (including Wifi passwords) and SMS & MMS messages. How do I restore these things on the new phone if I back them up on the old phone first?
Can I selectively restore apps and app data for only a few apps? There are some apps that are device-specific (e.g. Syncthing) where I don't want to necessarily restore the settings and app data associated with that app, because my shared folders will be located in a different place on the new phone. I would rather set up from scratch and establish my new folder locations, then allow the files to sync through Syncthing.
Thanks for any answers you can provide to these questions.
I would also welcome links to resources that explain how this works, especially vis-à-vis the new Google One branding.

With regards to "Is there a difference between Google One and Google Drive?" look inside here