Database Info

[Q] facebook and others data usage

I have [MAG cLK] NexusHD2-Gingerbread V2.7 [GRJ22 Android2.3.4] rom on my HD2. I have facebook too, as everybody.
In settings -> sync I only allowed for Gmail sync for contacts,gmail and calendar.
(I have background data and auto-sync activated in settings).
Facebook is off. And pretty much everything besides google sync.
In facebook application all notifications, refresh interval are off.
I'm using traffic monitor from radiopt to monitor data usage.
I noticed, during the night, 12.00-8.00 AM, facebook keeps making traffic: about 600KB per night. (~500 download, the rest upload).
What does it do? why it's going on internet if i have everything put on manual or never and no sync for it?
Other processes that use my data are
- android.uid.phone:10001 (dialer and dialer storage) = ~40kb per night
- android.uid.system:1000 (this has the account and sync services) = ~50kb per night. I suppose this one has to do with push services for gmail.
- com.google.uid.shared:100017 (network location, caledar sync, contacts sync) = ~150-200kb per night.
Anyone knows exactly what is being transmitted from which process?
And the main question , what is facebook doing??
Another question: how can i edit the startup programs, something like msconfig on Windows.

sharky2007 said:
Another question: how can i edit the startup programs, something like msconfig on Windows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
maybe there are better apps for this, but Optimize Toolbox has a.o. an option to selectively disable startup programs

[Q] How does backup to Google servers work? (on ICS)

I noticed an option in the settings menu to automatically backup my phone to Google servers. Settings, Wifi password etc... However I wasn't able to find any further information about this backup. What exactly is being backed up? I know that my contacts, calendar, mail are synced with my Google account but what about text messages, applications, application settings, Doodle Jump score? Can I display this backup somewhere online? If I reset my phone (for example to have it repaired), what will the phone look like once I log in again with my Google account?
I have Nexus S with Ice Cream Sandwich, I know this didn't work much with Gingerbread so I'm wondering what has changed.

The app data is displayed in your google dashboard (https://www.google.com/dashboard).
But, in my dashboard I only see 10 of 120 apps being backup'ed.
Anyone know how to get all apps backup'ed?

Thank you. Chmm, in my case I see only 8 of ~60 apps being backup'ed. I wonder why. At least some basic stuff like sms or call log would be nice to have automatically backuped.

Duplicate Tasks in Calendar

So the tasks app on the One S syncs with Google Tasks. You can also choose to have Google Tasks show up on your calendar. My problem is every task I enter shows up twice in the calendar. I have tried all different settings in the tasks and calendar apps. This includes hiding all calendars except tasks, and they still show twice.
I'm at a loss as to what is happening. I checked Google Tasks online and there are no duplicates. Is anybody else experiencing this?

I am also having this problem.
I haven't found a fix for it yet, but if I do I will make sure to post back here.

Same problem to me.
The only workaround I found was installing another PIM software (Jorte) and setting Tasks in Jorte only to local. But in this way they are not synchronized with anything.
I don't understand why HTC Sync or HTC Sync Manager synchronizes only calendar and contacts with Outlook and not tasks, this sounds crazy.

Same here
I have the same problem with my HTC one S. I'm contacting HTC, as this appears to be a bug in Sense. Both the duplicate entries appear to be originating as Tasks. When I try to delete one of the duplicates from calendar, both get deleted. Also, this appears to be a problem only with Gtasks; Exchange and Hotmail tasks work fine. Workaround for now is defaulting all new (non work related) tasks as Local. Just installed an update from HTC yesterday and the problem is still there.

Same issue
I have the same issue with on my HTC One S (stock ROM). I'm also hoping this gets resolved quickly.
There isn't a fix for it by tweaking the settings, but I find it strange that for the google account, I can check 2 different calendars.
One is named [my gmail address] and the other is named "Task". Under my gmail address are no appointments, "Task" does contain them.
I have found a temporary fix though for deleting duplicates, you just clear the phone's temporary data (not a factory reset). You can do this under [settings] > [storage] and tap "make more space" under both internal and phone storage. I don't know exactly which one contains the data. *Update* This only seems to work first time round...
This fix implies that the cause of the problem lies in the phone internally. From my intermediate knowledge of programming I suspect that every edit of a task (including creation of it) for google accounts is stored on the phone seperately as a file that doesn't equal (in programmatic terms) the others. Therefore, the calendar will hold every local "version" of the task + the one on google's servers.
As for resorting to alternative market apps, I haven't found any task app that easily lets me set a reminder on any date and time I wish. It's always the same day or the day before at most. The best I've seen is a very limited list of options that goes as far back as a week. Other problems include missing priority settings for tasks or it doesn't sync with HTC's native tasks or calendar app.

Actually I found, that one can only clear data of single process. I don't know its exact english name, because on my system is displayed in polish ("Pamięć kalendarza"), but it should be sth, like "calendar memory".
After clearing its data and opening calendar app, the list of available calendars was empty, but after a while (and clicking refresh, and clicking refresh in Tasks app) the list populated with calendars from google account and with those internal from the phone. And items from the google tasks calendar weren't duplicated any more. At least until they are edited again in Tasks app.
BTW, has anything changed in this topic? Is there any solution for this problem?

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

Disable standard Android 11 Contacts Provider and replace with alternate Contacts Provider?

With Android 11, Google seems to have taken yet another step in the "making Android increasingly painful to use" direction by disabling the ability for device-only contacts to be available via the standard Contacts Provider. Because of this, I have to use Google-stored contacts on my Android 11 device in order for these contacts to be available to my apps. Otherwise, my apps don't see any contacts.
I have a rooted Android 11 device, and I'm hoping that there is some way that I could disable the standard Contacts Provider service and that I could then install an alternate, custom Contacts Provider service which knows how to access device-only contacts, and which knows how to make these contacts available to all apps that need contacts ... and which never will try to store my contacts on any of Google's servers nor anywhere else in the cloud.
Is it possible to disable Android's standard Contacts Provider service? And does such a 3rd-party Contacts Provider service exist?
Thank you in advance for any thoughts and suggestions.

Well, I think I found a solution to the issue that I'm trying to solve. And it doesn't require any new Contacts Provider service to be installed, after all.
First of all, I made sure that contacts syncing is turned off.
Next, I installed the "True Phone" contacts and phone manager app from the play store and made it my default phone app.
Then, I used that program to make a local backup of my contacts, which is one of its capabilities.
Following that, I froze the Contacts app, but I kept the Contacts Storage app active. I checked the permissions for the Contacts Storage app, and I see now that it has no network-related permssions. So apparently, it just looks at the local contacts database, and some other piece of software is what actually syncs Google's cloud-based contacts data with the local database. And by turning off contacts sync-ing, it seems like I have indeed disabled that process.
Then, I went from my desktop computer to http://contacts.google.com with the same login credentials that are associated with my Android device. I then permanently deleted all of the contacts there.
(I rebooted my Android device between each of these steps and also after the final step.)
Now, my SMS and phone apps still see the contacts info in my local database. And I can manage the local contacts backup and restore via that True Phone app.
There are probably other phone/contacts apps which also could be used for this. But True Phone works well enough for me.
So ... it turns out that no OS surgery is needed to mess with the contacts nor to install an alternate Contacts Provider service.

PS: And I now have learned something. I was asking about a "Contacts Provider service", but I now realize that the standard Contacts Storage app itself seems to be the "Contacts Provider".
And because I found out that this app does not even have network permissions, it seems clear that this app simply gets contacts from the locally stored sqlite contacts database, and therefore, I don't need to replace this app with anything else.
And so all I needed to do was disable contacts sync-ing, because that is what would sync contacts between Google's cloud and the local contacts database.

How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.

blackhawk said:
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It took me around a day of on-and-off playing around sessions to figure this all out ... with some input from a few other helpful souls.
I agree about cloud-based services. I don't even use gmail. I run my own email server, so I use that to manage all my email accounts. I manage my own web servers and my own DNS servers, as well.
It's more work for me to manage those things, but I don't mind, and I actually enjoy that work, most of the time.