How to secure android device from spying and location tracking

Ever puzzled regarding being snooped on-line by the large  companies? will it raiseassociate alarm in your head? affirmative, massive giants from Amazon to Apple keeps a record of your on-line activities however nobody will it like, Google. the foremost vital word toddlers learn recently once ma and pop is Google. for pretty much each on-line user, web is google and google is web. The company has many tools for it’s users that build their life easier day once day. however convenience comes at a worth, reciprocally google tracks your on-line activity. It makes a record of your activities.

Google profile

Google makes a profile for it’s each new user on the idea on his/her activities upon the services like Gmail, youtube, maps etc they use. The classes area unit divided on the idea archaic & gender. Thisdata is asked once you produce a brand new account on google tools. the knowledge are filtered to focus on higher ads at you. you'll amendment the settings to cop out from being half-track for ads targets however you’ll still be seeing the ads on your page with any specific target of your interests.

History

Often you don’t realise that google has associate possibility in it’s settings to show off theobservation of your on-line history which implies that by default it keeps on aggregation all the infoof your browsing history. It keeps this log file of your each visit to any web site through the assistance of it’s programme with itself as a record.

Location

Tracking becomes realtime once somebody is aware of wherever you're. Users of humanoidsmartphones WHO use location services provides away easy accessibility to google that in tracks your whereabouts as often as doable. This falls into the class of the sort of data, or descriptive dataregarding what you are doing, that the National Security Agency was thus curious aboutaggregation. It willn’t extremely have all the precise places you’ve visited however it does buildassociate assessment of your entire journey.

Conclusion

Now that you just have return to realisation of the large begetter looking you, be very little carefulsubsequent time use these services. Study the implications & manage your settings terriblyfastidiously.


To secure the android device,first disable the following,by using Settings -> Apps -> All, and then clicking on each app and hitting the Disable button:


  • com.android.smspush
  • com.google.android.voicesearch
  • Face Unlock
  • Google Backup Transport
  • Google Calendar Sync
  • Google One Time Init
  • Google Partner Setup
  • Google Contacts Sync
  • Google Search
  • Hangouts
  • Market Feedback Agent
  • News & Weather
  • One Time Init
  • Picasa Updater
  • Sound Search for Google Play
  • TalkBack





At this point i assumed that all the above service is already disabled and install the given below application to get protect the android device from online spying


  • Google Authenticator - an older version is open source, but the latest versions are not. Why?? So, I used motp
  • Email - k9mail, of course
  • Encryption for email - Open-Keychain
  • RedPhone for secure calling
  • TextSecure- I THOUGHT this would provide secure SMS, but it requires Google for message handling. This is disappointing I am still using it, because its not bad and it handles HUGE amounts of SMS’ very well, but I’m looking for another solution.
  • Pushover - This was probably obvious, but has the same need of Google for message routing. They proudly run OpenBSD servers, so maybe they will find a solution one day.
  • Audible - I love audiobooks. The app I found is Material Audiobook Player. However, Audible books are encrypted. After a little work… You can go to Audible and they will let you download the DRM’d files. Therea are two formats: aax and aa. Download the aa version. Then there’s a program for Windows called SoundTaxi that will convert them to MP3. You do what you have to sometimes.
  • I listen to a few audio streams. I found ServeStream to be quite capable.
  • I listen to a lot of podcasts. AntennaPod is a bit confusing, but it gets the job done, and imported my OPML.
  • Alarm clock. I like Kraig’s
  • VyprVPN - I think this can be replaced in the future.
  • Firefox - I need to work out a good set of add-ons for mobile
  • Maps - OpenStreetMaps have come a long way and OSMand is great.
  • an FTP server to easily get files on and off over wifi. I haven’t decided which is better: prim or swiftp
  • A QR code reader - zxing
  • Plex - despite not always liking their decisions, ..
  • Skype - work requires it.
  • CalDAV and CardDAV - DAVdroid I do plan on looking at Flock though.
  • Reddit - RedReader
  • Hacker News
  • VLC
  • KeePass - keepassdroid
Those were the apps I needed to not feel inconvenienced. You might expect that since they’re open source or free that they won’t be very good. You’d be wrong Some of them are quite good. I also found some apps along the way that I think are neat:
So, once you’re done, be sure to turn off ADB debugging and ADB root on your phone. Also, k9mail can’t do two factor authentication, so you’ll need to use application specific passwords for that kind of situation. And don’t forget to use DuckDuckGo for search.