IP Table based Android firewall apps (i.e., DroidWall, LBE Privacy Guard) are known to provide a good measure for preventing applications accessing the internet. However, during the boot time, while they are not fully loaded in the background yet the phone might still be vulnerable.
It might have not occurred but there is actually a very simple solution to the above problem. Disabling the Data service before restarting the phone will leave no chance an application can get a chance to transmit data on the startup process. The option to disable/enable data is normally found under the Data Delivery from the Settings menu.
Also on my Motorola Atrix I found when data is disabled the phone starts a bit quicker for obvious reasons -- any apps that allowed to access the internet does not perform its tasks i.e. weather widgets.
I'm sorry if this tip was already a widely known knowledge. Hope it helps someone new in Android world.
When using the internet on your device that has an active carrier data plan and no WIFI network is available, the device automatically switch to carrier's data plan.
There are many instances where people with limited monthly plans have run into bloated bills due to unintentional excess data usage.
I searched far and wide across the forums, to find any tips, tricks, tools or best practices for optimized data usage, but could not find much.
This is my humble attempt to come up with such a list.
Hopefully this will help someone avoid those surprise excess usages and bloated bills.
Please bare with me if this is insufficient or if the information herein becomes outdated due to new features in latest Android versions.
I'm not an expert. I am kind of a half-noob myself
1. Install a Data Monitor application.
There are applications which help you monitor data usage.
They show how much usage has happened through carrier's packet data and how much is through WIFI.
They also show data usage per application.
If your ROM does not already have these features, there are so many applications available on the android market (Google play store).
Search for one that suits your needs. I personally prefer My Data Manager
Note that all these data monitor applications monitor the usage at real-time.
That means, they can only monitor your usage form the day you installed them. Don't wait till you run into an excess usage problem, install one now.
2. Explicitly turn off packet-data during huge WIFI downloads.
If you are downloading huge data over WIFI (say a 600 MB file), and in-between if your WIFI becomes unavailable, chances are that the phone switches automatically to carrier data and continues with the download.
This is a sure shot scenario to cause surprise excess usage.
The WIFI might become unavailable due to any number of reasons like:
Straying out of the signal area - if you are moving around
Source getting disconnected - I have a cabled broadband with unlimited data on my laptop, I make my laptop a WIFI hotspot (kind of reverse tethering) using a USB adapter (wireless N150 USB adapter from buffalo). Whenever there is a power cut, my broadband connection goes off until I manually reconnect. Also, my connection periodically times off if it's on for a long time, or my laptop might restart.
The router might malfunction or in worst case, the phone's WIFI connectivity might itself dysfunction.
The point is, keep in mind that the WIFI can go off half way through the download and you might end up using carrier data.
The best solution is to turn off your carrier data. [Uncheck Settings -> Wireless and network -> Mobile networks -> Use packet data]
You can turn it on once the download finishes or once you have stopped/paused the download and you are sure that it won't use up your packet data.
This way, you can ensure that you are actually downloading through WIFi.
3. Firewall - allow/disallow data access to individual applications.
There are firewall applications on the market that allow you to:
Block internet access to selected apps.
Many apps like offline games and simple tools require full internet access permission. At first glance, this looks suspicious as these apps do not seem to have any business going online.
The main reason most of them use this permission is to allow in-app Ads.
By using firewalls, you can block internet access to selected apps that do not require internet access for their normal functioning.
Separate packet (3G/GPRS) and WIFI data.
Some apps consume too much data, like Facebook, Google plus and some games.
If you don't need to be online on these apps all the time, you can allow them only WIFI access, so that they can sync only when WIFI becomes available and they can never use up your carrier data.
Toggle blocking status.
Useful when you want to occasionally turn it on for a while.
There are many such firewall apps available on the market and some antivirus apps also come with inbuilt firewall features.
I personally use DroidWall
Note:
Provide access to all android system applications, and apps which come pre-configured from your vendor (I guess they could be trusted)
Make sure all apps that require internet access are given the access - both in WIFI and 3G mode.
Make sure known data guzzlers are denied access - both WIFI and 3G (provided they do not require access for their normal functionality)
If in doubt about any particular app - I prefer to provide it access. Better safe, than risk impaired functionality.
4. Download Manager - pause/resume downloads.
Say you are downloading about 10MB of data and the connection drops when you are about 8MB completed.
At this situation, you do not want to start downloading from scratch again when connection becomes available.
This way, if you are moving in and out of connection, you will end up trying to download the same data again and again, drastically increasing the usage.
You need a download manager with pause, resume, auto resume features to handle this situation.
There are many available on the market, search and use a one that best suits your needs.
This works only for downloading from browser links, dropbox, etc.
The download manager does not come into picture if you are trying to download data directly from an app (like many games download huge data when started for the first time after installation).
I am yet to find an app which can handle this kind of situation. Something like - intercept any downloads initiated from within other apps, and provide you option to manage those downloads.
If anyone knows of any such app, please do update us.
However, most games and apps which do huge data download have inbuilt capability to manage the download.
For example, Sygic has an excellent download manager that manages maps and other downloads for it. It comes by default with Sygic.
5. Push Notification Detectors.
When you install certain applications, they might have tie-ups with certain advertisers to send add notifications directly to your device's notification bar.
Such ads are called push notification ads. They allow the developers to make some revenue and help keep the free applications free.
These notifications show up on your notification area periodically, even when the original application which installed them is not running.
As of now, I cannot find any statics/benchmarks to understand how much data push-notifications consume. But they definitely do consume some data.
It is a personal choice whether you want such notifications or not, I personally feel a little bit of data usage is OK, as it is a small price to pay and helps the developers.
But some applications might be tied up with greedy advertising schemes that do extensive push notifications and consume excessive data.
One best way is to go through the apps description carefully before installing.
If the developer clearly states that the app uses push notification adds, it shows some responsibility on the developer’s part and you can assume he has taken the steps to ensure that the notifications are not excessive and does not consume excess data.
You can then choose to either install or not install the application.
However, there are many applications which are silent about the fact that they use push notifications.
There are many detectors on the market which detect all the installed apps on your device which appear to use known notification Ad frameworks.
They do not block the Ads, but inform you which applications are causing them. You can then choose to uninstall those applications or give them only WIFI data access or freeze them for a certain period of time to monitor your data consumption.
I personally use AirPush Detector
6. Freeze / Unfreeze applications.
If you suspect some application to be causing excess data consumption through push ads, you can freeze it for certain time and monitor the data usage to check if there is any significant change.
There are many such applications on the market which allow you to freeze/unfreeze select apps.
Most of them require root access (I do not know of any such app which works without root)
Titanium Backup (Requires Root) is the best application out there as per my opinion.
It does much more than freeze/unfreeze. It's a must have app for any root user.
PS:
Be very careful which apps you decide to freeze.
There are many apps that should not be frozen, especially system apps and some of those that come preinstalled on your ROM.
If you try to freeze any such app which should not be frozen, you might render your phone unusable.
Please refer threads related to your device to get a list of safe-to-freeze apps for your particular device.
Rooting might void warranty and has an associated risk of rendering your device unusable if done improperly.
If you are unfamiliar with concepts, read through the forums here on XDA, use the search button
This is all I can think of for now.
If you have any more useful tips/tricks or best practices related to data usage, please add them here, so that it can help others as well.
Cheers,
Sandeep
Anyone have any luck running adhell on this phone? Was going to email the dev and see if they want to check it out.
Kept giving me an RILNOTIFICATION (Radio Interface Layer Notification) after installed and even after removing. Kept causing me huge data griefs and mobile data would only work when it felt like. Would throw up error lte : ESM - 31 EMM - X as well all the time.
If you tried it and are having trouble, you HAVE to reset your mobile data with ##72786#. I found trying to reset it any other way didn't work.
nosympathy said:
Anyone have any luck running adhell on this phone? Was going to email the dev and see if they want to check it out.
Kept giving me an RILNOTIFICATION (Radio Interface Layer Notification) after installed and even after removing. Kept causing me huge data griefs and mobile data would only work when it felt like. Would throw up error lte : ESM - 31 EMM - X as well all the time.
If you tried it and are having trouble, you HAVE to reset your mobile data with ##72786#. I found trying to reset it any other way didn't work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no problems here, installed, accepted the knox stuff, seems to be working. It isn't blocking the adds i get on the home screen of CM Browser though, or an add i just had in Tube Map so not sure how effective it is, i havent used it before yesterday. It is definitely blocking some ads though.
I'm running it just fine.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S8+ using TapaTalk Pro
Working fine here.
how are you seeing the error? I have it installed and haven't noticed any issues and seem to be working most of the time.
Got an email back from the developer, he said there does seem to be an issue with some carriers. He said he knew for sure now T-mobile appears to have trouble with it (hes getting reports of the same errors I am getting) and I have sprint and let him know.
My stuff still is acting goofy even after the reprovision. Also reset network settings and rejoined my current wifi network and completely reset up wifi calling and it will not work at all. I've never had it not work on this network. worked perfect until I installed and setup adhell.
Really wish I had never tried this stupid thing lol. Feel I'm going to be stuck with a restore....
No problems here: S8+ on Verizon.
Working fine on T-Mobile s8+ here.
I've tried adhell and disconnect pro now and both let through too many ads for my liking. on the homepage of CM Browser alone a load of ads get through every time. Never had anything like that on my S5 when I had roted and used AdFree. At this point I am thinking I need to try adguard or adblock plus (that use the vpn method) to see if they are any better as these two just arent blocking enough. The only potential issue with that is how much performance is affected by using those vpn methods, in terms of download speeds and battery life (VPN's use a lotof cpu power due to the encryption).
nosympathy said:
Got an email back from the developer, he said there does seem to be an issue with some carriers. He said he knew for sure now T-mobile appears to have trouble with it (hes getting reports of the same errors I am getting) and I have sprint and let him know.
My stuff still is acting goofy even after the reprovision. Also reset network settings and rejoined my current wifi network and completely reset up wifi calling and it will not work at all. I've never had it not work on this network. worked perfect until I installed and setup adhell.
Really wish I had never tried this stupid thing lol. Feel I'm going to be stuck with a restore....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im on tmo and have no issues using it.
I had it return a couple random times and a profile update would immediately fix it and make it go away for a long while.
adhell must screw with the APNs (seems that way anyway) as I was only having this trouble on one specific APN at this point and only when the phone would decide to change to it. Since I cannot edit or view the APNs, can't say what for sure. I've since done a full settings reset (tried network only and it did zilch) and it's finally stopped completely now going near 20 hours. I have been on this APN since.
Every profile update would change what APN I was using and it'd stop. Same as a reboot or airplane mode. Soon as I switched back to that APN, instant RILNOTIFICATION about no data.
Funny thing is, the data did work, just horribly.
Running on my T-Mobile S8+ with no problems at all. I hadn't used it before, but so far I like it very much.
Keep in mind that Google play music (which happens to be default music player on the s8) needs to be whitelisted in adhell. The program nails up a persistent connection when it can't connect to ad servers and will blow your battery and suck a ton of resources.
Once whitelisted, no issues.
I am very pleased with adhell. Arcitecture is great, utilizes knox f/w and is open source on top of it. I would not trust this kind if stuff to just anyone.
It does a good job paring ads way back.
It seems to work fine with my S8+. I have this app that used to be slow when loading, now it load new contents very fast. Great ad block app.
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
robber said:
Keep in mind that Google play music (which happens to be default music player on the s8) needs to be whitelisted in adhell. The program nails up a persistent connection when it can't connect to ad servers and will blow your battery and suck a ton of resources.
Once whitelisted, no issues.
I am very pleased with adhell. Arcitecture is great, utilizes knox f/w and is open source on top of it. I would not trust this kind if stuff to just anyone.
It does a good job paring ads way back.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does disabling google play music stop that? I have it disabled in package disabler anyway.
Also for an open source app, it sure seems to be letting a lot of ads through. I read somewhere it lets ads through from certain providers like adchoices or seomthing. For me it seems to let all the same ads through that disconnect pro does and I see no reason why.
ewokuk said:
Does disabling google play music stop that? I have it disabled in package disabler anyway.
Also for an open source app, it sure seems to be letting a lot of ads through. I read somewhere it lets ads through from certain providers like adchoices or seomthing. For me it seems to let all the same ads through that disconnect pro does and I see no reason why.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can go to github and open the .json file that contains all of the blacklisted URLs. There are something like 2000.
Re Play Music, I cant see how this activity would resume if you had the package disabled, but I cant confirm you wont either. I can tell you that if it becomes an issue you will know it. I got a warning suggesting to shut the app down a few days ago.
Disconnect Pro uses a VPN, so they proxy all of your data through their machines. I cant say a bad word about them, but this is something that I would look very hard into before doing. Also, I believe you need to pay or use only the Samsung browser which is less than ideal.
I like how adhell is dns based, and utilizes Knox for blocking. I am not suggesting that adhell is the most comprehensive blocker out there but it works well enough and I am comfortable with its architecture.
robber said:
You can go to github and open the .json file that contains all of the blacklisted URLs. There are something like 2000.
Re Play Music, I cant see how this activity would resume if you had the package disabled, but I cant confirm you wont either. I can tell you that if it becomes an issue you will know it. I got a warning suggesting to shut the app down a few days ago.
Disconnect Pro uses a VPN, so they proxy all of your data through their machines. I cant say a bad word about them, but this is something that I would look very hard into before doing. Also, I believe you need to pay or use only the Samsung browser which is less than ideal.
I like how adhell is dns based, and utilizes Knox for blocking. I am not suggesting that adhell is the most comprehensive blocker out there but it works well enough and I am comfortable with its architecture.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
disconnect pro doesn't use a VPN it uses the knox firewall to block by dns exactly the same way as adhell does, and in my limited testing it lets exactly the same ads through that adhell does too. I have heard that a lof of these companies get paid by some ad providers to let their ads through (i.e. simply not include their ads in the blocking), and the ads I have seen get through both adhell and disconnect pro have been obvious ads from obvious large ad suppliers which looks highly suspicious to me as there is no reason they aren't in their block list. These are all ads that were blocked on my rooted S5 using Adfree (or adaway i cant remember which one it was but it was a basic hosts file/dns based blocker and no such ads got through).
I looked at their site, the premium product is vpn based, the lower tiers apparently at not.
robber said:
I looked at their site, the premium product is vpn based, the lower tiers apparently at not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The one on the Galaxy Apps store ("Disconnect Pro Privacy and Performance") is not VPN-based. It does cost money, but it goes on crazy sales once in a while. I got it for a few bucks a year or so ago.
Although I haven't tried Adhell, Disconnect Pro has been flawless for me. No noticeable affect on battery life, zero difference in webpage loading speeds compared to using no ad blocker at all, and no annoying notification icons in the status bar. It works phone-wide, so it blocks ads in all apps. And best of all, root is not required.
I find that even the root-based ad blocking (eg: AdAway) would be a little too overzealous in its blocking and resulted in many video files on websites being blocked entirely just because they would contain an ad before the video. I don't get this problem at all with Disconnect Pro.
If Adhell works the same way that Disconnect Pro does but is free, then that's a win for everybody.
ewokuk said:
disconnect pro doesn't use a VPN it uses the knox firewall to block by dns exactly the same way as adhell does, and in my limited testing it lets exactly the same ads through that adhell does too. I have heard that a lof of these companies get paid by some ad providers to let their ads through (i.e. simply not include their ads in the blocking), and the ads I have seen get through both adhell and disconnect pro have been obvious ads from obvious large ad suppliers which looks highly suspicious to me as there is no reason they aren't in their block list. These are all ads that were blocked on my rooted S5 using Adfree (or adaway i cant remember which one it was but it was a basic hosts file/dns based blocker and no such ads got through).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Reminds me of when apple started letting ad blockers in the appstore for safari. First people charged for the apps, then many deleted them cause they felt bad, others would let select ads through for pay. Was a mess.
I get why websites and businesses want ads, but they are way too intrusive. Like when on youtube and you get stuck watching a min long ad you cannot skip. Those piss me off to no end. Not sure I see them as much anymore.
I've installed and tried both these apps, both use a VPN connection to "filter out" data usage (WiFi and Mobile data)... they also include logs of attempted connections with IP domains included.
However, when I block system apps such as Android System and its sub-apps, they still accumulate data. While some attempts for connection to Android System apps are shown in the log and blocked, some must be getting around it...because I check the Data Usage for Android System, and it constantly climbs even while "blocked" from data access by the firewall VPNs.
Anyone else have same issue? Is this just an inevitable flaw if you don't have root access? Is this possibly due to spyware which is somehow overriding?
Bump
Is there a firewall app that can block just certain connections from an App? I currently use AFwall+ which is great but it is all or nothing (unless you write custom IPtables rules).
I would like the ability to block certain connections like stopping an app connecting to "*.facebook.com" but allowing it to connect to anything else.
On android versions previous to Oreo, the Xposed module XPrivacy could do this. You could white or black list a connection.
My phone is running Oreo 8.1, is rooted and has Xposed, however I would rather not use a firewall app that uses a VPN to work, as I have my own VPN i need to connect to.
To Summerise: Is there an android firewall that works in a restrictive sense, ideally where it asks me to allow or deny each connection the first time it happens?