Protection from data "miners"

asked 2018-04-07 13:35:54 +0200

tortoisedoc gravatar image

updated 2018-04-07 22:05:03 +0200

In the context of android apps mostly; with the advent of GDPR, data protection is becoming more and more paramount. It should be enforced for apps to have access to granted resources, and only to those.

We know that sandboxing can help in limiting data access between apps. But is that enough? Sandboxing can help in this sense, but only if done in a "proper" manner. For instance, in android world, you get the "This app wants to access" page upon install; this page can list basically everything; and thats ok; the problem emerges when multiple resources need to be accessed in a bundle (for example camera & images & mic), but as a user only one is relevant to you as you use it (pictures). To my (limited) android knowledge, its impossible to give access to only images and camera and deny access to the mic (which could come in handy for example for the facebook app). Sandboxing wont stop the app from listening on your mic once its allowed to; and wont feed it dummy sounds, for instance. The same principle can be applied to other resources, for instace messaging, mails, calls.

The sandboxing must give a more fine-grained control over individual resources as the android permissions already do; this is the only way to get proper data protection in place. Then sandboxing becomes really valuable.

What are the possibilities we have currently in that sense for Alien Dalvik? Is there anything the community can do about this? Or should we look for alternatives?

edit retag flag offensive close delete

Comments

1

Up to now, the firewalling/iptable stuff does at least limit internet access for apps that do their job offline. Only a small step, but at least a start...

Lutwolf ( 2018-04-07 18:38:41 +0200 )edit
1

Good luck with tls. There's limits to what iptables can do; and not only about encryption.

tortoisedoc ( 2018-04-07 20:34:45 +0200 )edit
1

SFOS is in its baby shoes when it comes to privacy. Really hope the cooperation with russia will change this and we will get some usefull tools to protect our privacy.

h.berd ( 2018-04-14 23:49:29 +0200 )edit