Develop Bugs

Which phone locator app?

Which app do you use to locate your phone in case of loosing it?

I use Avast Anti theft features (formerly theft aware), install the app from the market and just uninstall the antivirus if you don't want it after installing the anti theft features.
Here is a review of theft aware.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/1...ion-weve-seen-to-date-really-hands-on-review/
Cerberus is supposedly good as well but I have yet to try it.

i use Cerberus Clicky
it has some good features.
i keep getting emailed pictures of me getting my lock code wrong

I use SeekDroid as of now. It has everything I was looking for. Got it for free on the Amazon free app of the day. Best part is no monthly fee!
https://market.android.com/details?id=org.gtmedia.seekdroid&hl=en

Android Lost is free and offers remote locking, wiping of internal and SD card, GPS tracking, full volume text to speech, pop up notifications and a while host more.

str355 said:
i use Cerberus Clicky
it has some good features.
i keep getting emailed pictures of me getting my lock code wrong
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Click to collapse
Just tried this out, instant purchase. Good app advice. Thanks

I cant believe this feature isnt installed into android.... you know seeing as google knows everything about you anyway

str355 said:
i use Cerberus Clicky
it has some good features.
i keep getting emailed pictures of me getting my lock code wrong
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Click to collapse
+1
10 char

GR36 said:
I cant believe this feature isnt installed into android.... you know seeing as google knows everything about you anyway
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Click to collapse
It is, under google latitude. But latitude is more for family and friends to know where each other are, not to locate a lost device.
I've only used Androidlost and only installed it remotely when the phone was lost. I'm surprised so many of you would keep a persistent app which can monitor your every move and record audio and photos of you secretly. And people freaked out about Carrier IQ?

str355 said:
i use Cerberus Clicky
it has some good features.
i keep getting emailed pictures of me getting my lock code wrong
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for advice Its a great app, and now I use it too

I have always used wheres my droid. You can use it to make it ring by sending it a text from any phone saying wheres my droid or you can locate it via gps by texting it gps my droid.

SeekDroid works well for me.

EP2008 said:
It is, under google latitude. But latitude is more for family and friends to know where each other are, not to locate a lost device.
I've only used Androidlost and only installed it remotely when the phone was lost. I'm surprised so many of you would keep a persistent app which can monitor your every move and record audio and photos of you secretly. And people freaked out about Carrier IQ?
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Androidlost looks great feature wise, but I couldn't get it to activate remotely via SMS. I sent the text via Verizon as well as a online SMS tool. Weird...

Yes its both unbelievable and embarrassing, that you have to pay for a Google Apps account to get this.
GR36 said:
I cant believe this feature isnt installed into android.... you know seeing as google knows everything about you anyway
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I use SeekDroid as well.
It has never failed me yet
SeekDroid allows you to secure and find your phone from anywhere in the world!
SeekDroid allows you to locate your lost or stolen device anywhere in the world. See your device on a map, set off an audible alarm, wipe the device, and more.
SeekDroid requires Android 2.2 or greater and a working data connection.
Control the following from our secure website:
- Control Multiple devices under one account
- Locate your device
- Remotely Enable GPS
- Display its location on a map with history!
- Track the device using breadcrumbs
- Get notified if the device has left a fenced
in area
- Audible alarm (even on silent)
w/ custom message
- Text Messaging support
- Setup SeekDroid Remotely via SMS
- Lock device w/ custom code
- Retrieve recent calls
- Remotely wipe entire phone
- Remotely wipe SD Card
- Hide from app drawer
- Disable App from being
uninstalled
- Virtually no battery drain
- Works without a SIM Card
- Reteive SIM ID, IMEI,
active phone number, and battery remaining
- More features coming soon!
Setup is easy! Install the application on your device and create a username and password when the application launches. Make sure GPS is enabled for more accurate results, and your Google account is setup on your device. That's all! You can do everything else from our secure website at seekdroid.com
If you have any issues, questions, or feature requests please feel free to contact us through the website as we are ACTIVELY LOOKING to help people. Don't just rate it bad, we can get it working on your device!
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Click to collapse

+1 androidlost

Built in adware?

I just read about a find my mobile exploit, and went into settings to turn it off for now.
I look into the Samsung account, scroll down, and see "ads"!
It looks like by default, we are allowing Samsung to spam us with ads so I turned it the hell off!
I still haven't found where to turn find my mobile off yet, but I never installed the app, so we might be safe.
Thoughts?

If you click on it, it asks you to consent to receiving "customized services" (a crap-ton of ads). (I have it unchecked.)
But, I have it installed and tried it out on my computer. I haven't noticed any additional ads on my phone. Just my 2cents.

Google Play Services Find My Device Issue

This is recurring in all phones I've had for at least a year now. Once again...And it is just now that I am once again getting upset at Google Play Services making itself a device admin daily on startup so it can update its app daily. So it can weasel into the browser and log my account and store cookies and track and etc etc etc.
If I do not lose my phone, then it should stop activating the find my device. If I lock my screen, then it should stop activating itself as an administrator. If it was just to find the device, then it should stop putting itself as an account in my browser.

The Google Play Services can no longer be reverted. It has turned the phone into just another chunk of Google Garbage.

It's a critical part of android. What is it you are trying to achieve by locking it down?

James.Miller said:
It's a critical part of android. What is it you are trying to achieve by locking it down?
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site storage in browser. I believe it is s carrier config or carrier settings. I have ridden myself of it by disabling carrier configs on other phones but here I can't disable carrier system apps.
I play with it off on some phones, and of course on rooted phones. It is irremovable here now. I had it removed during the first few days on my new A70 but now can't get it off noway no how.
The carrier configs and other things from carrier are a real problem. Carriers (used to) push settings they deem appropriate at regular intervals on an old phone I had. Their settings push included things like turning on location, and worse. all kinds of settings would get changed. Google calls these in its "partner" app. It's all tied together. There are credit agencies certs, and security companies in the system app.

James.Miller said:
It's a critical part of android. What is it you are trying to achieve by locking it down?
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Click to collapse
I may sell the phone if I can't use it on internet without continued police insults on my humanity. I'm sick of it all. Been taking abuse for years. Only useful as a gaming and music player.

In my experience, once you have confirmed to your own recognition that they are behind the curtain of the device, talking to you invisibly thru the back door in the comments sections of the internet, then the phone is no good.
I believe that screenshots of their android back-doored comments, -- along with proof in pictures or recordings that they have been speaking in narrative to you that way -- should be grounds for money back from the phone company for the device. The device is faulty then beyond the shadow of a doubt and worthless and irreparable. Money back should be the rule for hacked devices.

comments, recommendations...or other festures being hacked. I have had apps hacked, I have had voice recognition dictation hacked. etc. I don't remember a list of features of android I've stopped using because of insult hacks. The predictive words on the keypads, and auto correct, used to be a favorite exploit they'd use to deliver cracked commentaries against my humanity...
All features and apps I no longer use. And how many people would never pick up on how these devices are being used against them.
I think the phones should be peogrammed to avoid cached dns results, and to randomize the dns it uses. The apps such as YouTube should never return to an open session or use a cache. These devices are fast enough and simple LTE/4G is fast enough to load fresh sessions from sites from new lookup services.

if Google needs to have Find My Device in Android to serve customers who are afraid their devices will be stolen by non professional phone thieves or lost, then they should sell different versions for those who don't want a system admin like Google which gets its money from data theft and spamming.

The persistent settings in the browser for its default site bothers me. I got rid of it on my Oreo running phone. Took awhile, but I finally got rid of it on one phone by deleting all browser data. It comes back when the browser restarts on internet tho, and persists again like a foul barnacle. Used to be able to get rid of it.

Here it's seen it camoflages itself if I change the default search page, but it still persists

Remove / Disable Google and MI bloat apps

Hello everyone,
I'm used to the LineageOS on my previous phone and now I've upgraded recently to this phone but I feel my personal info too much available to Google and MI system apps and I don't want that, thats why I went to LineageOS on my previous phone but, like others custom firmwares, it have several bugs which limits the potential of the phone.
Even not using an google account I can feel my life is being spied because a few things happen:
- if someone calls me, a friend or whatever, and its not in my contacts list it asks me if its spam. For what? To send the info somewhere using the internet connection and warns others if its spam? If it reads my contacts for this it can read those for anything, like copy my whole contacts list which I'm not comfortable with and I'm not able to control. I'm afraid that later if i use the regular browser to access Gmail for instance, I'm afraid the OS is prepared to warn google that all the info that' I've shared so far belongs to that particular Google account and that phone IMEI is also used but that account. I'm crazy? Maybe, but all this is possible and I want to make it impossible.
- If i do not allow Google services from accessing my text messages APP (built-in app) i keep getting a warning from the system that something it will not go OK if I do not turn on that access from Google services. Why the hell should google services needs to access my texts? My first phone, 20 years ago, could send SMS without google, why the hell google needs to see my texts now?
The list continues but I'm not willing to loose the nice things this OS have too, but for me personal info is too valuable and I dont want to give away any information from my contacts list, SMS texts, the places I visit, my tastes and so on, all this is my personal life and no one needs to know about it, not even just for statistics. Some people on my contacts list doesn't use Android and dont want the personal phone number stored somewhere and connected to me somehow, not that Im a criminal or something like but all this combined together its like a personal "Facebook" for Google and MI to use, they know who are the persons who I connect with, who are near me at a certain period of the day, where I usually do shopping, well, all my life is being stored somewhere, and I want to end this.
Is there a way to keep the current OS and block every outgoing info coming from the phone? I've made some research and i come to this so far
- AFwall can be a solution, but how good it is?
- Removing google services is not an option using ADB, the OS will not work
- Disable google services is not working. The system keeps turning it on automatically
Please give me your feedbacks with your experiences about this security issue, I think several people feels the same way, and how did you managed a work around to this keeping the original OS.
PS: For now I didnt unlock the bootloader, but I will if the solution goes that way.
Thank you everyone
Tomalamix

Living in the age of Google, one cannot use phone & Internet without your info being collected for ad purposes or whatsoever.

Ad purposes i can live with that,. what I cant live with is my personal data being stored by a 3rd party company besides my cell operator
Ive been watching the Anti-Gapps group but it seems discontinued i guess, i think this is a task fitted for them

LineageOS Stripped Down Kids Mode?

I've got two kids, ages 6 and 8, and we keep their screen time limited, but they love audiobooks and for the past few years we have bought them cheap mp3 players and loaded audiobooks on them from the library using the Overdrive app on a pc which then syncs the mp3s to the mp3 player. However, Overdrive has been discontinued and is likely to be fully killed off sometime in 2023 (no doubt thanks to pressure from the publishing industry) whereupon the only way to get audiobooks from the library will be through the Libby app, but this of course requires an internet connected device. For obvious reasons I don't want to just give my kids an Android phone with access to Youtube, social media, etc. I have played around with LineageOS to breath fresh life into an old Kindle tablet and various older phones, so I'm thinking perhaps picking up some cheap old Moto phones and loading them up with LineageOS would be an option, but I'd want to strip out some of the functionality and remove the web browser, phone and sms, and basically just have a camera, Libby app, k9 email client, and if possible voice recognition. presumably Libby and k9 mail could be sideloaded. Not sure about voice recognition, but it seems like maybe Gapps pico or microG might offer a way to implement google voice recognition? But is it possible to have voice recognition without having the play store? As far as removing the browser, it appears that LOSdiet should work for that purpose.
Anyone embarked on a similar task?

mgrharry said:
(...)
Anyone embarked on a similar task?
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Why can't you use a guest account?

While I suppose using the Guest feature on a stock Android device might be an option, I'd prefer not to go down that route for a few reasons. First, it seems like it's mostly designed as a temporary option for loaning a phone to a friend, not as a permanent function, and I am afraid it would be easy to accidentally delete all the contents of the guest account which would result in a very unhappy kid. Second, if they know it can do all the things a "real" phone can do and they're just locked out of doing them, that will make them much more prone to nagging us to install random junky games and apps and fiddling around trying to access the main account. I'd prefer if it just wasn't an option at all.

Maybe try it out before you reject it.
Google Family Link

Yes, I have also the combination of google family link and LOS and IF it is working, it is working really great!
On some systems, you need to have two user profiles on the device, as the children account alone would lead to an FRP lock , at least on S4 and S5 neo.
I got it one time working by adding first the parents account and then afterwards adding the children account. In Settings, enable multi user and then add a PIN (or whatever) to prevent access to your account from the one your child is using.