AppManager

Tech discussion begins at 14:00. At 21:00 [0] Snowden calls for [developers to build] smartphone tools to let users take control of their devices (wouldn't be for the first time). While a no-root, user-space firewall can only do so much (Daniel Micay will attest to that [1] :), that's what we are building with RethinkDNS (https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app) for Android phones, picking up where WhisperSystems left off [2]. This other complementary Android app (doesn't require root, but does require "developer mode" turned on) I use, gives a lot more control over installed apps and its components (no so much over the device's network itself): https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager While Google continues to make significant improvements [3], security-focused Android distributions like CalyxOS and Graphene remain the best avenues to

Ex-AOSP hacker here. I felt it strongly at the time too that Android didn't need anti-Malware [0] but I don't anymore. Some 5 years ago, I switched to Firefox Mobile out of annoyance because Chrome refused to block all those popups random websites would show with some prompting an app install. Google has since made a lot of improvements including tightening up which apps can install other apps (not a blanket permission anymore), running the Potentially Harmful Applications program, narrowing down fingerprinting (still some way to go as evident by TFA). Google is even locking the code up that runs outside of Android in crosvms [1]. I'm positive, things will improve [2] even if slowly because Android, at this point, is the most widely distributed OS and they can't move as fast anymore without hurting developers and users. Google did impleme