The $24B Data Business That Telcos Don't Want to Talk About

Re:The $24B Data Business That Telcos Don't Want to Talk About by nicholasjarnold on Tuesday October 27, 2015 @04:27PM (#10460859)

Yes, one can limit some permissions, but there are others that vanilla Android will not allow one to block. For instance: Device ID. I don't have a complete list of the un-blockable permissions, but simply using Android's built-in functionality is not sufficient to block all identifiable data that your phone's apps leak.

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Re:The $24B Data Business That Telcos Don't Want to Talk About by hackuser on Tuesday October 27, 2015 @06:13PM (#10461550)

> simply using Android's built-in functionality is not sufficient to block all identifiable data that your phone's apps leak

Do you know happen to know a solution? I know there are many confidentiality utilities and Android forks which emphasize it, but I don't know enough to evaluate them.

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Re:The $24B Data Business That Telcos Don't Want to Talk About by nicholasjarnold on Thursday October 29, 2015 @11:03AM (#10471529)

Not exactly. Years ago I used an app called LBE Privacy Guard with success, but it's closed-source and cannot be trusted with such a privileged level of access to my phone.

Now I use a combination of blocking with the built-in app, running a custom ROM with root (which allows you to use many of the known privacy apps at their full potential), regularly changing my DeviceID with the help of yet another app and routing some of my device traffic through Tor via Orbot. It's definitely not perfect, but I feel like I'm at least partially thwarting the rampant collection/trade of my personal and private data.

So, sorry I can't be of more help, but you really have to just dig in and read the fine print with this sort of thing. Many of the apps only work with specific versions of Android, require root, might require ROM patching, ect. YMMV, unfortunately. Good luck.

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