blokada

There are a lot of binaries other than Android that run on Smartphones that you cannot possibly control from within Android even with fully-privileged apps (let alone restricted user-space apps). And, even within Android, because Blokada doesn't support "Block connection without VPN", there's no guarantee that apps don't bypass the VPN it sets up. Besides, Blokada leaks DNS requests over TCP (only handles the UDP ones) [0]. All of this is discounting the fact that Blokada has a hard-coded list of applications it blanket allows by-default [1]. Also, these fingerprinting bits in their code-base doesn't inspire confidence either [2][3]. I'd not consider Blokada a serious security app at this point, though it does have the potential to be one. disclosure: I co-develop a similar foss app. [0] https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada/blob/65992cdc

Just a happy user :) Blokada is pretty popular for Ad blocking on Android. And it's open source too: https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada

> Honest question : Can you expand on how this would work please? Such a thing is already possible today. Some require root, some require breaking PlayStore's terms of use. One such example is: XPrivacyLua [0] by the creator of NetGuard. It helps fake location data, hide contacts and calendar, fake device-id, IMEI, MAC addresses etc on a per-app basis. Another example is how VPN in Android [1][2] is widely used to block trackers and ads. A third example would be how the accessibility service APIs are (ab)used to temporary grant permissions to apps [3]. A fourth would be reversing engineering tools like Frida [4] that help with inspecting apps, and even change their behaviour. A fifth is repackaging APKs with advertisement and tracking code removed, like with YouTube [5]. I am attempting to build an app with most of these features combined

Super! Thanks. For reference: https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada https://blokada.org

No "jailbreak" required on Android. Just implement the VpnService API. https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada/blob/master/app/src/ma...

Not in the list, but Blokada (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/) is a must-have. It sets up a VPN and blocks ads and tracking. Rooting the phone is NOT required. FWIW, as per its inbuilt metric, it has been blocking about 1000 trackers per day for me. Also, the code is open source (https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada)

Take a look at Blockada. https://github.com/blokadaorg/blokada