My Android Privacy Configuration
I'm always a bit shocked when I hear people saying that “Google and others track you anyway on your smartphone and there is nothing that can be done about it”. I sense a certain frustration not only on the side of the person who's made the statement. But I obviously beg to differ. As this comes up quite frequently I decided to put together a blog post that I can then refer to with the things that I do on my Android based device to keep my private data as private as possible.
The Three Cornerstones to Privacy
In essence, my efforts to keep my private data private is based on three cornerstones:
- As few apps on the device as possible that communicate with servers on the Internet without my consent.
- Allowing access to private information such as location, calendar entries, the address book, etc. to specific apps while blocking access for all others by default.
- Preventing communication of apps with servers on the Internet that I would like to use. Amazon's Kindle reader app is a prime example. It's a good app for reading books but if left on it's own it's far too chatty for my taste.
In some cases, implementing these cornerstones in practice is straight forward while other things require a more technical approach. The rest of this blog entry now looks at how I implement these cornerstones in practice.