I'm looking for a way to locate phone if lost or stolen. I've used Cerberus for years with good luck, but my paid account has been mysteriously deleted? The key features would be:
1. Locate phone with gps and wifi triangulation
2. Take front and rear photos on command
3. Ability to hide app (root is OK)
I've done some searching, but most threads are very old. Thanks in advance.
Hey, my Cerberus account is gone as well and I've been looking for forum posts reviewing alternatives, but haven't found that many, so decided to mention the best ones I've found myself:
Prey Anti Theft - This app can track the location of your phone using GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell towers. You can also remotely take photos and lock your phone. Prey can be hidden from the app drawer and disguised as a system app to prevent it from being uninstalled.
Lost Android - This app allows you to remotely control your phone via text messages from another phone. You can locate your phone, take photos, lock your phone, and wipe your phone's data. Lost Android also has a stealth mode that hides the app icon and prevents uninstallation.
Avast Mobile Security - This app offers anti-theft protection, malware protection, and a VPN. You can track your phone's location, remotely lock it, and take photos and videos. Avast can also hide itself from the app drawer and disguised as a system app.
Lookout Security & Antivirus - This app provides anti-theft protection, malware protection, and identity theft protection. You can track your phone's location, remotely lock it, and take photos and videos. Lookout can also hide itself from the app drawer and disguised as a system app.
Most of these are paid though, but if someone needs a free alternative there are few options as well.
Related
Vault—the Ultimate in Privacy Protection
Vault hides your confidential SMS messages, contacts, call logs, pictures and videos. It’s the BEST app for Android users to hide SMS messages and call history from prying eyes! It keeps your private stuff hidden, giving you complete control over your privacy and security.
With Vault, you can:
1. NEW in 2.0! Monitor who’s trying to see what’s on your phone and photograph them in the act. This feature requires an Android 2.3 (or higher) device with a front-facing camera.
2. NEW in 2.0! Hide your photos and videos so only you can see them. They’ll be encrypted and only viewable in Vault when you enter the correct password.
3. Import your sensitive SMS text messages to Vault. Strong encryption and password protection ensures they’ll be hidden from everyone but you.
4. Make your private contacts invisible. Simply add a number to Vault and any calls or messages from this number will only appear in Vault. They’ll no longer appear in your phone's native SMS folder and call logs.
TIP: We recommend adding your most commonly used contacts to
Vault. If your phone is lost or stolen, you won’t have to worry about anyone accessing your contacts or messages.
5. Protect your real Vault by creating one or more “fake” vaults. If someone insists that you give them your password and display your secret messages, you can show them the “fake” vault. Problem solved!
Check it on market Market link
Send me a PM for download link
theme
what's this theme on the screenshots?
This app lost all of my contacts that I stored in it and since it deletes them from your android contacts I can't get them back. Photo/video seems to work but definitely would not recommend this app for anything you wouldn't want lost.
despotisminc said:
This app lost all of my contacts that I stored in it and since it deletes them from your android contacts I can't get them back. Photo/video seems to work but definitely would not recommend this app for anything you wouldn't want lost.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you must return to your settings before uninstall the app... i did the same mistake first time but my luck was that i chose to hide only the videos... so before uninstalling turn back to show contacts, videos, and other things that you selected to hide
I think you have a folder on your sdcard (the app folder) and there must be the things that you chose to hide.. cheek it
i have format my hp without backup my file on vault 1st...then after format i install vault back...my old file cannot open...please help me to recover back my file...
Does anyone know of an app that can actually hide other apps?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using XDA Premium App
free cannot, premium may offer additional feature
Needs a file explorer. I have videos that I need hidden, but the app can't find them.
Help
I accidently cleared the Data of this app… I've reinstalled it, but it doesn't show the previous ones :'(
What should I do ?
I've searched that long time
Thanks a lot
Hi I am trying to understand permissions management a bit better, primarily what all the different things you can block etc are. Some of the things such as Call logs, Calendar, SMS etc are self explanatory, but other things (what they are and implications of access to) such as:
Device ID
Subscriber ID
SIM serial
Phone and mailbox number
Incoming call number
Outgoing call number
Network location
List of accounts
Account auth tokens
SIM info
Network info
Is there an FAQ/Guide that explains these things in detail that someone could point me to?
Thanks,
-Gaiko
Make phone calls
Services that cost you money
This permission is of moderate to high importance. This could let an application call a 1-900 number and charge you money. However, this is not as common a way to cheat people in today's world as it used to be. Legitimate applications that use this include: Google Voice and Google Maps.
Another important point to note here is that any app can launch the phone screen and pre-fill a number for you. However, in order to make the call, you would need to press [Send] or [Call] yourself. The difference with this permission is that an app could make the entire process automatic and hidden.
Send SMS or MMS
Services that cost you money
This permission is of moderate to high importance. This could let an application send an SMS on your behalf, and much like the phone call permission, it could cost you money by sending SMS to for-pay numbers. Certain SMS numbers work much like 1-900 numbers and automatically charge your phone company money when you send them an SMS.
Modify/delete SD card contents
Storage
This permission is of high importance. This will allow applications to read, write, and delete anything stored on your phone's SD card. This includes pictures, videos, mp3s, documents and even data written to your SD card by other applications. However, there are many legitimate uses for this permission. Many people want their applications to store data on the SD card, and any application that stores information on the SD card will need this permission. You will have to use your own judgment and be cautious with this permission knowing it is very powerful but very, very commonly used by legitimate applications. Applications that typically need this permission include (but are not limited to) camera applications, audio/video applications, document applications
WARNING: Any app targeting Android 1.5 or below (possibly 1.6 as well) will be granted this permission BY DEFAULT and you may not ever be warned about it. It is important to pay attention to what version of Android an app is targeting to know if this permission is being granted. You can see this on the Market website in the right hand column.
Read contact data, write contact data
Your personal information
This permission is of high importance. Unless an app explicitly states a specific feature that it would use your contact list for, there isn't much of a reason to give an application this permission. Legitimate exceptions include typing or note taking applications, quick-dial type applications and possibly social networking apps. Some might require your contact information to help make suggestions to you as you type. Typical applications that require this permission include: social networking apps, typing/note taking apps, SMS replacement apps, contact management apps.
Read calendar data, write calendar data
Your personal information
This permission is of moderate to high importance. While most people would consider their calendar information slightly less important than their list of contacts and friends, this permission should still be treated with care when allowing applications access. Additionally, it's good to keep in mind that calendar events can, and often do contain contact information.
Read/write Browser history and bookmarks
Your personal information
This permission is of medium-high importance. Browsing habits are often tracked through regular computers, but with this permission you'd be giving access to more than just browsing habits. There are also legitimate uses for this permission such as apps that sync or backup your data, and possibly certain social apps.
Read logs / Read sensitive logs
Your personal information / Development Tools
This permission is of very high importance. This allows the application to read what any other applications have written as debugging/logging code. This can reveal some very sensitive information. There are almost no reasons an applications needs this permission. The only apps I might grant this permission to would be Google apps. The name of this permission recently changed as it came to light how important and dangerous this permission can be. Both the old name and category and the new name and category are listed above.
Read phone state and identity
Phone calls
This permission is of moderate to high importance. Unfortunately this permission seems to be a bit of a mixed bag. While it's perfectly normal for an application to want to know if you are on the phone or getting a call, this permission also gives an application access to 2 unique numbers that can identify your phone. The numbers are the IMEI, and IMSI. Many software developers legitimately use these numbers as a means of tracking piracy though. This permission also gives an application to the phone numbers for incoming and outgoing calls.
WARNING: Any app targeting Android 1.5 or below (possibly 1.6 as well) will be granted this permission BY DEFAULT. And you may not ever be warned about it. It is important to pay attention to what version of Android an app is targeting to know if this permission is being granted. You can see this on the Market website in the right hand column.
(see image above)
Fine (GPS) location
Your location
While not a danger for stealing any of your personal information, this will allow an application to track where you are. Typical applications that might need this include (but are not limited to) restaurant directories, movie theater finders, and mapping applications. This can sometimes be used for location based services and advertising.
Coarse (network-based) location
Your location
This setting is almost identical to the above GPS location permission, except that it is slightly less precise when tracking your location. This can sometimes be used for location based services and advertising.
Create Bluetooth connection
Network Communication
Bluetooth (Wikipedia: Bluetooth) is a technology that lets your phone communicate wirelessly over short distances. It is similar to Wi-Fi in many ways. It itself is not a danger to your phone, but it does enable a way for an application to send and receive data from other devices. Typical applications that would need bluetooth access include: Sharing applications, file transfer apps, apps that connect to headset out wireless speakers.
Full internet access
Network Communication
This is probably the most important permission you will want to pay attention to. Many apps will request this but not all need it. For any malware to truly be effective it needs a means by which to transfer data off of your phone; this is one of the settings it would definitely have to ask for.
However, in this day and age of cloud computing and always-on internet connectivity, many, many legitimate applications also request this.
You will have to be very careful with this setting and use your judgment. It should always pique your interest to think about whether your application needs this permission. Typical applications that would use this include but are not limited to: web browsers, social networking applications, internet radio, cloud computing applications, weather widgets, and many, many more. This permission can also be used to serve Advertising, and to validate that your app is licensed. (Wikipedia article on DRM).
View network state / Wi-Fi state
Network communication
This permission is of low importance as it will only allow an application to tell if you are connected to the internet via 3G or Wi-Fi
Discover Known Accounts
Your accounts
This permission is of moderate-high importance. This allows the application to read what accounts you have and the usernames associated with them. It allows the app to interact with permission related to that account. An example would be an app that was restoring your contact, would discover your Google account then send you to Google's login screen. It doesn't actually get to see your password, but it gets to work with the account. This is also legitimately used by applications to add contacts to your accounts, such as dialer replacements and contact managers/backup/sync/etc.
Manage Accounts
Your accounts
This permission is of high importance. This allows the application to manage the accounts on your phone. For instance it would be used by a service like Facebook to add an account to your accounts list. It seems at this time unclear if this permission allows an app to delete accounts.
Use Credentials
Your accounts
This permission is of high importance. This will allow an application authorization to use your accounts. They do this typically by giving what's called an AuthToken depending on what account you use (Google/Facebook/Yahoo/Last.fm/Microsoft/etc.). It's not as scary as it sounds however, it does typically protect your password from being seen by the application. However, it's still a very important permission you should give only with great caution.
Read/modify Gmail
Your messages
This permission is of high importance. Few apps should need access to your Gmail or email account. Email is also a prime method for managing accounts with other companies and services. For example, someone with control over your email could request a new password from your bank. While this is the worst case scenario, and there are various legitimate uses for this permission, it's still best to treat all email related permissions with extreme care.
Install Packages
System tools
This permission is of critical importance. This allows an application to install other applications on your system. This can be exploited by virus writers to install adware and malware on your system without your knowledge. It is a very, very dangerous permission and should almost NEVER be granted to a typical app. The only legitimate uses for this permission are for Market-like apps such as the Amazon AppStore or the Android Market.
Prevent phone from sleeping
System tools
This is almost always harmless. Sometimes an application doesn't expect the user to interact with the phone directly, and therefore may need to keep the phone from going to sleep. Many applications will often request this permission. Typical applications that use this are: Video players, e-readers, alarm clock 'dock' views and many more.
Modify global system settings
System tools
This permission is pretty important but only has the possibility of moderate impact. Global settings are pretty much anything you would find under Android's main 'settings' window. However, a lot of these settings may be perfectly reasonable for an application to change. Typical applications that use this include: volume control widgets, notification widgets, settings widgets, Wi-Fi utilities, or GPS utilities. Most apps needing this permission will fall under the "widget" or "utility" categories/types.
Read sync settings
System tools
This permission is of low impact. It merely allows the application to know if you have background data sync (such as for Facebook or Gmail) turned on or off.
Restart other applications
System tools
This permission is of low to moderate impact. It will allow an application to tell Android to 'kill' the process of another application. However, any app that is killed will likely get restarted by the Android OS itself.
Retrieve running applications
System tools
This permission is of moderate impact. It will allow an application to find out what other applications are running on your phone. While not a danger in and of itself, it would be a useful tool for someone trying to steal your data. Typical legitimate applications that require this permission include: task killers and battery history widgets.
Control Vibrator
Hardware controls
This permission is of low importance. As it states, it lets an app control the vibrate function on your phone. This includes for incoming calls and other events.
Take Pictures & Video
Hardware controls
This permission is of moderate importance. As it states, it lets an app control the camera function on your phone. In theory this could be used maliciously to snap unsuspecting photos, but it would be unlikely and difficult to get a worthwhile picture or video. However, it is not impossible to make malicious use of cameras.
wow, thats perfect thanx!
I am looking for a secure contact (and related misc. information) manager/phone-address book that encrypts the database and protects its records from other apps as well as in case of the phone being lost. This is for Android.
I've been looking for such an app for quite some time and in various sources. I found some people asking for something similar, but with no answers. I also found some "secure wallet" programs that could almost do the trick, except that they store secure information but no people's contacts. While, of course, I can record phone numbers (and addresses) in a free-note format, that wouldn't allow easy dialing of those numbers, or easy copying of the addresses to the navigation apps (Google Maps, Waze, etc.).
None of the contacts managers I found offer encryption/protection.
I couldn't find any discussion about this type of app. I am surprised why nobody is interested in such an app. Or am I just looking in a wrong way?
Do such apps exist?
I have been looking for the same thing.
So far the only thing I have found is essential pim pro app. It uses it's own encrypted database to save the contacts. It also can share the contacts through an account in Android 6+ (not sure how secure that feature is)
There was a very old personal information manager app that had very few permissions that might also work but I have not used it in 4 years and forget the name(not could I find it when I searched Google play)
So I'm still looking for a open source app that is very similar.
FreakSense: Online Privacy Shield is able, once downloaded and installed on our Android smartphones or tablet, to scan and do a search on all the applications installed on the device that we have access to our online profiles. The search can be carried out to discover the applications that have access to our data from Facebook, Yahoo !, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram and Flickr. These are the main ones, but you can add other online services.
Online Privacy Shield also will catalog the software used on the PC
What might seem strange is that it should be listed not only the applications that you have currently installed on your device, but also applications that have also uninstalled a long time or you have installed on your PC. But what assures us that not Online Privacy Shield does just what he fights for? I mean, who assures us that it does not store our data?
The answer lies in the fact that, in addition to being specified in the description on the Play Store, whenever we want to scan an online service, we have to re-enter again our data.
cloudyjohn said:
FreakSense: Online Privacy Shield is able, once downloaded and installed on our Android smartphones or tablet, to scan and do a search on all the applications installed on the device that we have access to our online profiles. The search can be carried out to discover the applications that have access to our data from Facebook, Yahoo !, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Instagram and Flickr. These are the main ones, but you can add other online services.
Online Privacy Shield also will catalog the software used on the PC
What might seem strange is that it should be listed not only the applications that you have currently installed on your device, but also applications that have also uninstalled a long time or you have installed on your PC. But what assures us that not Online Privacy Shield does just what he fights for? I mean, who assures us that it does not store our data?
The answer lies in the fact that, in addition to being specified in the description on the Play Store, whenever we want to scan an online service, we have to re-enter again our data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didn't know about this app before. Doesn't seem that useful to me frankly. I'd rather restrict access to my info than simply be told who has already acessed it. Furthermore, it is not open source. That is usually a no-no for security/privacy apps as you then have to hope the developers aren't lying about any claims they make.
Have a look at OpenPDroid or even CM11 in-built Privacy Guard or AppOps for some examples of tools that restrict what apps can do/access on your device.
Incidentally, having to re-enter your online credentials isn't evidence of anything. The app may still transmit your data and credentials to external servers without your knowledge or permission anyway and the need to re-enter the credentials just ensures that it always has up-to-date credentials in case you changed your passphrase/password for instance. An open source app that you can build yourself removes any doubt.
I'm just wondering how secure Samsung's Secure Folder is if I use it as a Sandbox for those high-risk or untrustworthy app (like some from China).
I was told it's supposed to be a sandbox for it doesn't allow any access to the data outside the Secure Folder, but I'm not sure how permissions works in it (like access to GPS/ Phone Call or other hardware). I suppose they couldn't have any access to my phone call or GPS location if I'm not inside the Secure Folder (how about if it's in background)? But on the other hand, access to bluetooth or camera are inevitable when some apps might need it.
If those apps within secure folder can have access to my phone call then I would be much worried about those high-risk app monitoring phone conversation.
I might be wrong. Any insight or elaboration would be great
last i checked secure folder is where you can store notes....images....and apps(i guess)
you store them and only you have access to them through pin.
its not a sandbox bro....its just a secure folder