Super quick breakdown of the most essential security applications for Android OS.
ADAWAY
► Effective hosts adblocker AFWALL+
► Root-based firewall based on Linux ip-tables EXODUS
► Check your applications for telemetry trackers and secure your privacy YET ANOTHER CALL BLOCKER
► quality open-source call blocker Forked mod for Russia region
. Fork is manadatory thing for people living in a Russia because access to application online database was blocked by Czech owner, due to war initiated by bunker rat.
Just a quick note to share high-quality Android audio player with all of you. Software is developed for hi-res hardware digital audio players like FiiO, Shanling, iBasso. The most important feature is bit-perfect OS independent decoding and audio processing.
Speaking about bright sides of application: precise audio reproduction, loads of professional tools.
However, there is one notable downside: user interface and ergonomics are very confusing to say the least.
I bet some of you are already tired of ugly g monopoly with their telemetric data mining platform os-called operating system. As for me, i fixed myself on Android 8.0, last operating system without support of neural networks. These nets help to fingerprint your personal data and send it to marketing companies later on. I’m pretty sure that people in sane condition will not like such behaviour at all.
Pinephone is based around Linux and not android, it doesn’t track or profile you.
v0.88b: please contact me
if you find errors or inaccuracies.
In this guide i will quickly show my system configuration tweaked for privacy. I’m using essential stuff like 4G/WiFi & BT. Additional pleasantries are blocked.
█ ANDROID 8: OS WITH MINIMAL TELEMETRY Operating System: Android 8.0 [Android 8.1 ain’t good, coz it brought support of neural networks to do effective data mining] Security patch: 1st September 2018 FW Version: 47.
As my main web surfer IceCat begin to showing it’s age and don’t have any new versions apart from “super-new” 68.4.2 ESR. [it can be found on the web, but only @ F-Droid Archive repository
] So, I start to look for a viable replacement for it.
Although, I ‘m using Privacy Browser
as a backup option it doesn’t fully match my requirements. It’s even prone to crashing on 4Gb Ram Sony XZ1 Compact phone
, assume memory leaks are taking place.
UPDATE 2020-10-11: Added Excellent APKGrabber
ALTERNATIVE FIRMWARE As for firmware, I recommend to use LineAgeOS
if your device is supported. Neat FW with minimal tracking and no bloat from big corps. If there is no native LineAgeOS support check XDA forum threads
for unofficial ports by community enthusiasts. If your device is not supported in both cases I do not recommend to update stock firmware to prevent bloat’n’telemetry installation.
Most of the applications can be found on F-Droid market
.
All of them checked for unneeded permissions by Exodus
.
Only IceCat browser has some minor tracker.
Of course you run into situations when you would like to copy “non-standard” files to your Android smartphone and dumb MTP protocol showed up window like this one:
And this torture repeated after every new file type copied. Such imbecility can be removed by following command in admin console:
regsvr32 /u wpdshext.dll
That’s all, limitation is gone.
Another hint, which potentially can help to overcome weird design of MTP protocol.
UPDATE: 2021-12-18 Added IceRaven browser
Today it is not an easy task to do. There are plenty browsers out there. “So, what is the problem?” you may ask. Most of them are based upon google chrome. This means that all of them are dialing back to google to share your private data. That’s the main problem.
Here is my personal list of browsers that I use in a daily workflow: Main surfer: Ice Cat 78.