Honeycomb - Apps, security & Privacy?

[Guest englishboy]

Im completely new to this. Ive just started on my Android journey since buying the £139 Currys Refurbed Vega. :)

So while I wait for delivery Im starting to read up on what goodies I can do when it arrives.

My question is regarding personal info collected by Android devices and sent back without the users knowledge. Firstly! Im not overly concerned and I know that personal information sent back to app developers is useful sometimes. Im defo not an overly paranoid divvy, Im just interested :) As Android Apss number over 6billion now - the odd malicious App is sneaking through. So Im just curious as to what is being done to at least keep an eye on what is happening with personal info sent from your device.

(youtube vid) went on to show that even the harmless wallpaper APP sent your Imei & phone number back each time its used & that half of all apps on Android phones send personal info to the developers without asking.

The vega doesnt have a Simcard etc to have an IMEI or a phone number to send back. But as honeycomb becomes more used on tablets I guess other more detailed info will start to be sent back to App developers.

So. I wondered if anyone has run Taintdroid (or similar) on honeycomb? does it run? And did anyone find any surprises or anything interesting?

Cheers

[Guest englishboy]

Im completely new to this. Ive just started on my Android journey since buying the £139 Currys Refurbed Vega. :)

So while I wait for delivery Im starting to read up on what goodies I can do when it arrives.

My question is regarding personal info collected by Android devices and sent back without the users knowledge. Firstly! Im not overly concerned and I know that personal information sent back to app developers is useful sometimes. Im defo not an overly paranoid divvy, Im just interested :) As Android Apss number over 6billion now - the odd malicious App is sneaking through. So Im just curious as to what is being done to at least keep an eye on what is happening with personal info sent from your device.

(youtube vid) went on to show that even the harmless wallpaper APP sent your Imei & phone number back each time its used & that half of all apps on Android phones send personal info to the developers without asking.

The vega doesnt have a Simcard etc to have an IMEI or a phone number to send back. But as honeycomb becomes more used on tablets I guess other more detailed info will start to be sent back to App developers.

So. I wondered if anyone has run Taintdroid (or similar) on honeycomb? does it run? And did anyone find any surprises or anything interesting?

Cheers

hmmm....Am I best posting this in another section of the forum?

[Guest simonta]

Or maybe no-one can answer your questions? I doubt that anyone has run Taintdroid.

But I'll have a go.

1. What makes you think that Honeycomb plays any part in this? Your personal info and the amount of it available does not change because you install a new version of Android. If you give an app permission to access something, and you run as root (which is true if you're running any of the custom apps on here) then it's the combination of the app and that permission that determines what can be mined out of your Vega.

2. 6 billion Android apps? Hmmm, last count I saw was around 250,000 but maybe I've been dozing :)

3. Apps like Taintdroid are academically interesting but not of much use. What's practically interesting is "are the data actually going somewhere, rather than just being put on the wire" and "is anything actually done with it if it does go somewhere".

4. You cannot know the answer to number 3 unless you are on the receiving end so therefore, the only practical answer is to stop it being put on the wire in the first place. DroidWall and similar are you answer here.

5. From all of the reviews that I can find, it seems that most Android anti-malware is pretty ineffective but Lookout seems to do the best job. my own personal defences are therefore DroidWall and Lookout.

6. Note that Droidwall can be problematic as you need to understand Android quite well to set it up and it doesn't have separate inbound rules. On my phone, I don't do anything clever. Satnav, email and calendar. That's about it, so almost everything is blocked. On my Vega, I don't store anything personal except email and I simply don't install any app that asks for access to it.

Cheers

Edited September 9, 2011 by simonta