Slashdot Mirror
The App That Tracks Who's Tracking You
Daniel_Stuckey writes "It's no secret that apps like maps or local weather know your current location, and you're probably cool with that because you want to use the handy services they provide in exchange. But chances are there are many other apps on your phone, anything from dictionaries to games, that are also geolocating your every move without your knowledge or permission. Now researchers are developing a new app to police these smartphone spies, by tracking which apps are secretly tracking you, and warning you about it.
Before your eyes glaze over at the mention of yet another privacy tool, it's worth noting that this new app is the first to be able to provide this line of defense between snooping apps and smartphone users for Android phones. Android's operating system is engineered not to allow apps to access information about other apps. But a team at Rutgers University found a way around that, by leveraging a function of Android's API to send a signal whenever an app requests location information from the operating system. MIT Technology Review reported on the research today."
Briefly reading TFA, these guys are analyzing people's reactions to various privacy-warning user interface options. Their baby app that heuristically monitors location-api usage is far less capable than xprivacy or its kin of android tools.
I can't find any good information on this either way, but in the past any Android app could read anything stored on external media - and some apps are stored to external media, meaning that any application could monitor them.
Is that still the case? Or do apps not have full read permissions on external media in Android if they are granted permission to access it?
Also on a side note it seems like if you grant an app permission to read SMS messages it could also monitor at least that activity...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Despite Google yanking App Ops out of Kit Kat in the latest update, you can still put it back in.
No need for Angry Birds to have access to your information. Simply limit what it can access and forget it.
There's a way for an app to discover and report on what other apps are doing? FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC! Because THAT'S not a security hole at all!
The actual metadata is collected at, or near, the source, they only download app "fixes" when you're actively being pursued.
So, this will give a false sense of security to the 99.9 percent of American citizens who are being tracked by the NSA in an Unconstitutional and Illegal manner.
Oh, and we know exactly where you are even when you turn off location services, btw.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Or maybe, Android could deny approval of applications that try to seek location data for applications that have no location based function. Data mongering fuckers.
Jelly Bean can already do that. There is another comment below that mentions how to do it in Kit Kat.
This is an app that exploits a security hole to detect apps that are exploiting a security hole? What's wrong with this picture?
Google removed App Ops for versions in an update for 4.42. If you don't have a rooted phone, the closest thing I've found to a solution is Mobiwol, a firewall which forces apps to connect to the internet through a VPN that doesn't go anywhere. You can choose to give apps their access to the outside world whenever they have focus, so at least they only spy on you when you're using them. Then the problem is: should you trust Mobiwol?
.. if you go hastefully through the ToS it is very easy to miss that _some_ data will be communicated to 'momma' server _anyway_, regardless of user control settings, and that they reserve the right to do basically whatever they want with it.
Their stated intentions for the collected data, should they (the company behind the addon, working with Mozilla for the time being) not be acquired, go bankrupt or 'experience corporate restructuring', is to produce a public internet map with it to show which megacorp is connected to which other megacorp- but there is no link or even a timeline for that, and they are not really clear as to what data they will make public, how, when and where.
I have my doubts for them, as I do for this app.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
It's trackers all the way down.
Google removed the api, but not because it was something they wanted to prevent.
The API was done in a hackish way that could cause more security issues than it solved.
I expect Google will install an after-the-fact fined grained permissions control in a future Android versions, that will allow you to turn off access for apps that are permission greedy. If you prevent access to some information, an installed app may fail, but that is preferable to the blanket installation time approval system we have today.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"Yo, dawg! I heard you like....
Nah, it's just to easy.
What's wrong with this picture?
How much time do you have? How long is your attention span? Did you bring food?(this could take a long time)
I guessed you were asking a rhetorical question and already know some/most of the answers, so I did not elaborate.
If that was a serious question, reply back and I will try my best for you; if not, just ignore my stirring of the puddle. :-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Sounds like Xzibit pimped your phone...
To the best of my knowledge Android doesn't allow you to set specific permissions on the app, only to agree or disagree. (on my Nexus 7 2nd Gen)
Android, if they allow the app, will release a patch to stop the "exploit" it's using.
They also don't allow you to access attached USB storage without rooting or other "work around" apps.
There's a reason for this.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The app should allow blocking of certain apps access to gps or whatever system they are trying to access. If my dictionary app is accessing my gps then allow me to block that app from using it.
You probably want lying rather than blocking... The arms race between you and the hostile dev is over pretty quickly if you block (plus, naive applications that just assume they have the permissions they requested on install will probably crash right, left, and center, which is their fault; but your problem). Lying, by contrast, is unlikely to be 100% bulletproof against a good data-miner; but 'well-formed and plausible' is certainly much, much, harder to notice and respond to with certainty than being blocked is.
Google's motives for removing fine-grained permission are all speculative at this point. Some argue that Google removed permission control because they don't want a user backlash against "broken apps" and don't want to slow down their marketshare growth.
I would counter that argument with those developers should get flooded with broken app messages so they can re-design their apps to still function or quit altogether if a given permission was not available to it. E.g. The shady Dictionary App should still work if geo-location fails (which it does if you've disallowed location for all apps in the global settings).
Privacy Guard blocks location access to whatever apps it is enabled for.
Generally though, I examine the permissions an app requests _before_ I install it, and if it wants permissions it doesn't need, I don't install it in the first place.
Gump My phone is plugged in here. Now this mother-fucking trace buster is gonna keep that mother-fucker from uh... tracin' our shit you know what I'm sayin'? And not only does this trace buster keep our buster from tracin' your call but it can also uh... uh... trace the mother-fucker that's tracin' your shit!
Cisco All right, so what if they have a trace buster too?
Gump Yo yo yo, that's why I gots this Trace Buster BUSTER. See, when the mother-fucker tries to bust your trace with a trace buster. This mother-fucker is gonna bust the mother-fucking trace buster that's bustin' your... uh...
Cisco Trace!
Gump That's my word playah!
That's been my preferred method since the mid-90's. It also makes fingerprinting the device more difficult if you are jiggling the values between sessions. Now if it were as easy on my Nexus 7s as it's been on the desktop/servers.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Immediately after reading the summary, I suspected this would just use "getLastKnownLocation" and correlate that with the foreground app. From searching through TFA, that is indeed the case. Technically, not very interesting at all.
The version that was implemented DID break apps. Even the version in Cyanogen breaks apps, and does so in a way which generates cryptic error messages. It ISN'T ready for release to a non-technical audience.
And sure, YOU may want users to get "flooded with broken app messages", but no company that wants to sell phones does. Not if they want to stay in business.
This app has been available since Android 2.1 or earlier, and needs root access of course:
http://www.appbrain.com/app/pe...
Google has had years to implement user-chosen permissions revocation. Even hidden in Developer Tools under Settings would have at least given app developers the chance to test their apps against losing permissions.
How about an app that tracks who's tracking you, then mails thousands of junk e-mails to every officer in the companies tracking you.
Oh I dunno, my Galaxy becomes unstable enough with an average sized suite of apps. I can't see how adding more to tell you about the status of the status is really going to help.
They said clearly that they were developing the permissions manager,
no (afar as app opss is concerned). Read Dianne Hackborn's comments in here :
https://plus.google.com/+Danny...