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Hey guys,
I'm in the very very early stages of my masters work and I was toying around with the idea of using an Android tablet for part of it. I want to ask you devs what can be done when modifying the Android OS itself specifically in terms of a few things.
1. Logins - I would like to implement a classic user/password combination with levels of access for user, administrator, and some sort of superuser.
2. Restriction of User account - I would like to lock the user into one particular application. It must be relaunched when the device is booted and if the application crashes (hopefully not!) it must be restarted. Additionally, no market access, web access, etc.
3. Remote management if possible
4. Data encryption if possible
5. Prevent anything from being introduced from USB ports, SD slot, etc if unwanted.
I guess this brings me around to - is Android even the most suitable platform for such an endeavor. I'm not sure, to be honest, but I would love to get into development myself and this seems like a great way to learn. This is all just one part of a much larger project that I don't want to discuss just yet so sorry for being lax on details.
Thanks guys!
Android runs a virtual machine system called dalvik, in which each application gets it's own insuranceof the machine. It's implemented in such a way that each application gets assigned a user id, which unfortunately for you means each app is a different user, at least to the system. That's going to be a major wrench in the multi user plans. taking that into consideration, to have the same level of control over your tablet you'd have to give even the most basic user level "root" access or else the apps will start crapping their collective pants. As far as unwanted usb, there are a few apps that implement this functionality freely available through the market. Same with remote management. What I haven't seen yet is total encryption and I don't know enough about it to say it's possible or not. Seems feasible though.
My advice: write a custom login screen widget and then bake all these features into a pretty rom.
Hey,
i´m currently wondering if i should go for the Lumia 920 or the Note 2.
There is the everlasting app question that´s holding me back, so, if anybody could give me a headsup if the following is available ...well, it would be nice:
1. An app/tool like myphonexplorer (http://www.fjsoft.at) to a) write sms on pc b) backup these c) sync
2. is there a vnc server available (did not find anything) for winphone? or is this possible with winphone8?
3. I´m aware that there´s no real notification center - but what if you have a news app installed (say cnn for example) and some breaking news is coming in. is there something like a popup on ios/iphone?
thanks in advance
1.) There is no local sync functionality with Windows Phone. All PIM data has to go through ExchangeActiveSync which means GMail/Outlook.com or another MailServer like Exchange. SMS can be backed up to the Cloud although there is no export functionality (Apps can't access a users SMS in WP8).
2.) There is no VNC server as Apps can't access other Apps visual state. I don't know why you would need a server on the phone anyway. Looking through the Marketplace brings up several VNC Clients, I didn't test any of them though.
3.) There are Toast-notifications that pop down from the top of the screen. Those are displayed for a set amount of time (some seconds) and then vanish (or you can swipe them away to make them disappear before that or tap on them to be taken to the App). Aside from that there are tile-notifications that display info on the Live Tiles. Which of those features an App uses and how information is displayed on the tile is up to the App's developer.
Thanks for your answers, which lead me to one more question:
Is it safe to assume that (sadly) such a tool like Airdroid (http://airdroid.com/) will never see the light of the day on wp8?
I´m asking all this because i don´t always have my phone in my hands and accessing most of it functions via a browser was a *huge* plus in the past for me (especially with the mentioned aidroid).
With the current official APIs it's not possible. Perhaps someone could hack something like this in the future but as always I would not count on this. It didn't happen for WP7 for sure.
So in the end I guess that's a no.
Who is Tracking '
Paid app link :https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appz.trackingpaid
The application will detect any malicious APPS or BLOATWARE trying to track your location and user information (Bluetooth, WiFi, Bank Accounts, Messages, GPS, Social Networks information, 2G & 3G, etc.).
Application - Features :
'Who is Tracking' will detect any malicious apps or bloatware trying to track your location using GPS, or tracking user data from incoming / outgoing call lists, messages, Wi-Fi network information, 2G/3G data, Gmail, Facebook and similar apps. (Few features works only paid). Using this applicaiton you can find-out any one HACKING or TRACKING your phone.
WiFi, GPS,2G,3G,4G,GPS,NFC & SERVER TRACKER: After running the detection test, you will receive a real time sound alert if any traces of tracking is found. In-case anyone is trying to track you, the sound will come automatically (Real time sound works only paid).
App Server Tracker : Track apps server location (Which country server the app is using) Gmail Server location, FB, Twitter, etc...
Sus App list : List Danger apps
App Permission Blocker - Block certain application permission..
Sound Alert : After running the detection test, you will receive a real time sound alert if any traces of tracking is found. In-case anyone is trying to track you, the sound will come automatically (Real time sound works only paid).
System Information : Know about your device system information (Processor, CPU Core , SD card, Memory).
Android OS : Manufacture info, Model No, Product Release, Version, Device Info, Open GL, Kernel info, etc.
App Permission : List of permission required by the apps.
User Installed App : List of applications installed by user.
System App : List of System apps.
'Who is Tracking 'provides a list of all apps which are accessing GPS, Wi-Fi, 2G/3G, Gmail and other apps, and also the reason why the apps need this info (Few features works only paid).
Allow Mock Allocation : Enable this feature to send mock GPS data if any app is trying to access GPS info for longer duration or multiple times.
[ Example : Yelp has permissions to access GPS data to triangulate on your current location to provide you with restaurants around you. But it accesses the data only once on initialization, but malicious tracking apps will keep accessing the GPS data to track your movements and location at all times in the background. ]
Select - Delete History : Deletes complete history information from your device (Few features works only on paid version).
Why 'Who is Tracking ' was created
There are communities in hacker forums and blogs whereby they push to develop and publish apps which can track your data and retrieve the extracted information (Ex. your contact information, email IDs, phone numbers, saved bank account details or any other important information).
Android, to a certain extent, can restrict such apps from being published in PlayStoreTM , but hackers bypass these by using techniques like reflection, API mirroring, etc.
Even though all the custom ROM developers take immense care in providing ultimate user data protection, still hackers copy the OS, modify the APIs to provide access to personal data and hidden / internal APIs. By this, they will be able to monitor, record and access the data created by you while sharing with various apps on your Android device.
We used a couple new features of ANDROID to stop hackers to track the information.
http://selinuxproject.org/page/SEAndroid
http://source.android.com/compatibility/
http://efytimes.com/e1/fullnews.asp?...date=6/10/2013
http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/mobil...ld-for-android
http://www.electronicsweekly.com/eye...droid-2013-03/
Any issue, feel free mail me.. we will release paid version very soon with complete features..
Please Don't forget to hit THANKS BUTTON.
seems useful. it's always frightining to know what android can do with your data. how it can very easily compromise your privacy. but,apps like these should be installed by default in base os. users have right to know what's happening to their data and where it is going. Thanks fir your effort. also, a quick question? if some apps have so much power to buypass security protocols and hack ur data,then what about custom roms? aren't they capable of doing that? can a developer tweek things and add scripts that very easily transfer almost all data my phone collects? like most people here on xda, i use a lot of custom roms for my devices and this is one of the questions i always wonder.
Sent from Heaven
delay response..
Check the inline comment....
lavinigam said:
seems useful. it's always frightining to know what android can do with your data. how it can very easily compromise your privacy. but,apps like these should be installed by default in base os. users have right to know what's happening to their data and where it is going. Thanks fir your effort. also, a quick question?
if some apps have so much power to buypass security protocols and hack ur data,then what about custom roms?
What is the meaning of custom rom, developed by the general user etc.... There are default behavior in android which no one will change.. its a flow... so once app can work for any device with any rom.. simple logic....
aren't they capable of doing that? can a developer tweek things and add scripts that very easily transfer almost all data my phone collects?
If the custom rom dev thing he can do that... its your wish to choose to use or not.... but 99.9% they will not.. its all about brand name.. no one here to spoil or hack data... we are here to save users.. as much as we can...
like most people here on xda, i use a lot of custom roms for my devices and this is one of the questions i always wonder.
Hope you understand my answer...
Sent from Heaven
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I found the google analytics SDK very easy to integrate with some of my android apps, however the problem I have is with the web dashboard. It's not straightforward to use, and mobile analytics seems to be the poor cousin of the web analytics version. Even finding data on something as simple as user timings (which was very easy to code into the app) is difficult. I know it must be capturing a tonne of useful data but visualising it and actually getting some useful insights from it is another story...
Are there any good (ideally free) alternatives out there, where it's actually easy to interpret the data?
Cheers, Matt
kiwiandroiddev said:
I found the google analytics SDK very easy to integrate with some of my android apps, however the problem I have is with the web dashboard. It's not straightforward to use, and mobile analytics seems to be the poor cousin of the web analytics version. Even finding data on something as simple as user timings (which was very easy to code into the app) is difficult. I know it must be capturing a tonne of useful data but visualising it and actually getting some useful insights from it is another story...
Are there any good (ideally free) alternatives out there, where it's actually easy to interpret the data?
Cheers, Matt
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Click to collapse
There are some alternatives visualizations of the same data. Did you check out some apps for the same:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.e6bapps.ganalytics
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.co.madhur.ganalyticsdashclock
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.co.madhur.dashclock
You should really put a disclaimer: "I am the developer of this app". Your dashclock extension looks nice and simple though.
Those overview statistics like screen views and downloads are fine and a nice morale boost, but what I'm really interested in is actionable data that points to specific things in the app that need improvement.
E.g. If 80% of users leaving a certain screen after a few seconds it might point to the screen being confusing. Things like that.
madhur_ahuja said:
There are some alternatives visualizations of the same data. Did you check out some apps for the same:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.e6bapps.ganalytics
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.co.madhur.ganalyticsdashclock
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.co.madhur.dashclock
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Thanks for the suggestion, but there is not a function that can analyze the source of the downloading as Google PC analyze. Could you recommend another one?
Fyerwong said:
Thanks for the suggestion, but there is not a function that can analyze the source of the downloading as Google PC analyze. Could you recommend another one?
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If you are looking for website similar to Google Analytics you can try Flurry I don't know if you can use it on your smartphone as a Mobile App but for sure it's good alternative for google analytics!
Alternative to Google analytics
Flurry is a good option
Thank you for this, I think I'll try flurry because the analytics the google play console provides are just not enough.
just learned that Flurry has a very useful customer behavior analytics. I think we should also try this aside from Google Analytics.
Found a new analytics site that Appannie has implemented into their system, seems to be asia based, worth adding, just did with mine
https://dev.mobvista.com/user/showreg/?u=TVRVMU9RPT0=
What features do you think are missing from Google Analytics?
I know some tool for tracking your user the name
Admob Analytics:
The biggest ad provider for mobile devices, currently has an analytics platform for the mobile web in beta
App Clix
it offers developers an analytics product, not an analytics service. With App Clix, developers runs analytics through their own server environment, cutting out the ability for the middle man to review the analytics data without authorization
Bango
Bango provides identification for every user accessing the app, providing information like the user's carrier and connection speeds. You can also use Bango to drive mobile app campaigns and implement tracking for other application features
Pinch Media & Flurry Analytics
They provide a free specialized service for analytics in mobile apps. They allow you to tap into user info with the approval of the user, giving you location, age, time, session lengths and more.
Try Leanplum - they're affordable (monitoring up to 500 daily active users is for free), packed with analytics and A/B testing functionality, and their help section is amazing! Alternatively, I've also used Mixpanel, but it's more focused on doing A/B tests than on good ol' analytics.
Parse is cool platform
Check out mobile analytics toolkit - devtodev.
Relatively new to the market, has a really nice and responsive support, and own education center.
There's always Mixpanel.
Free for small amounts of data, but gets expensive at larger amounts. It's events concept is much better than GA, but the SDK can be a bit buggy.
Also, the new Facebook Analytics platform. Totally free, and has a similar events system to Mixpanel.
codiaq said:
Thank you for this, I think I'll try flurry because the analytics the google play console provides are just not enough.
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I think you are just not using the power of Analytics right. With a combination of custom events and custom dashboards you can track and visualize everything. I doubt that any other product can provide you anything that you couldn't easily setup in Analytics.
There is also fabric.
https://get.fabric.io/
It's totaly free, incredibly easy to include in your app and it's paired with crashlytics that is one of the best crash report solution.
The results it give are not extensive : you have daily and monthly users, new daily users, number of sessions and sessions lengths: a good resume.
Gauss Widget for Google Analytics
kiwiandroiddev said:
I found the google analytics SDK very easy to integrate with some of my android apps, however the problem I have is with the web dashboard. It's not straightforward to use, and mobile analytics seems to be the poor cousin of the web analytics version. Even finding data on something as simple as user timings (which was very easy to code into the app) is difficult. I know it must be capturing a tonne of useful data but visualising it and actually getting some useful insights from it is another story...
Are there any good (ideally free) alternatives out there, where it's actually easy to interpret the data?
Cheers, Matt
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should use Gauss Analytics Widget on your Android desktop. Find it on Google Play
When developing an application for desktop windows, there's always a way to access functionality - sometimes through back doors like the registry, etc... I'm developing an application for Windows Phone 8.1, but there are certain pieces of functionality that aren't exposed in the PRT APIset that is available to me. For example, we want to ensure that the user has password protection on the lock screen when using the application. There doesn't seem to be any associated APIs to readily use. So my question is, are there back door ways to do such things? How? Is there a way to access ALL system settings - like a registry or something of the like?
proch said:
When developing an application for desktop windows, there's always a way to access functionality - sometimes through back doors like the registry, etc... I'm developing an application for Windows Phone 8.1, but there are certain pieces of functionality that aren't exposed in the PRT APIset that is available to me. For example, we want to ensure that the user has password protection on the lock screen when using the application. There doesn't seem to be any associated APIs to readily use. So my question is, are there back door ways to do such things? How? Is there a way to access ALL system settings - like a registry or something of the like?
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Another question would be - if something like intune can enforce lock screen password policies, shouldn't I be able to do it the same way that intune does it? If so, how? If not - why not?
It's not possible to check if user enabled lock screen password or not as far as I know
but if you want to made your app secure (because it may include important data)
you can create a password for your own application !
I did it in a little notepad app my password page allow user to set a password with all English and Persian Characters , numbers and special Chars like [email protected]#$ and etc.
Sent from my RM-994_eu_poland_1183 using Tapatalk
It's pretty easy to check, using the registry, but at least in 8.0 that's not allowed at all for store apps (your app would get rejected). I don't know if the rules changed for 8.1. There are ways to sneak past the store checks, but they could pull your app from the store if they ever found out. I know of at least three ways to access the registry APIs (4 in WP8.1) and two of them are pretty hard to detect unless somebody checks for them specifically... but they're the kind of technique that malware uses, so such checks may be in place.
I don't know what InTune is doing, specifically - I'd need to pull the app apart to see - but there are special application capabilities (not normally available to third-party developers) that can query and even set policies. Apps without those capabilities will get Access Denied if they try to use the same methods though, and normally you can't add those capabilities to your app.
GoodDayToDie said:
It's pretty easy to check, using the registry, but at least in 8.0 that's not allowed at all for store apps (your app would get rejected). I don't know if the rules changed for 8.1. There are ways to sneak past the store checks, but they could pull your app from the store if they ever found out. I know of at least three ways to access the registry APIs (4 in WP8.1) and two of them are pretty hard to detect unless somebody checks for them specifically... but they're the kind of technique that malware uses, so such checks may be in place.
I don't know what InTune is doing, specifically - I'd need to pull the app apart to see - but there are special application capabilities (not normally available to third-party developers) that can query and even set policies. Apps without those capabilities will get Access Denied if they try to use the same methods though, and normally you can't add those capabilities to your app.
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Thanks for this great and detailed information. See, that's exactly what I'd do if I were developing a desktop app - since i know that intune does it, I'd figure out how intune does it and voila. I'm finally getting over the idea that the same methodologies apply to windows phone development.
For my own educational purposes (since I want to understand this platform better), I would really like to know specifically how you go about accessing the registry APIs (for example). If there's any way for you to describe any number of these methods, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks again!
My NativeAccess libraries (check my signature, or search on the forum or on Codeplex) contain an example of one way to access the registry. The code is open-source; you may use the libraries as-is (don't expect to get them into the store, though I won't stop you from trying), use the source code as a reference, or modify/build them yourself; the license is very liberal (MS Permissive). The functions I use are generally documented on MSDN, in the desktop APIs section; the phone has the same functions, although the DLL names are changed and the header files hide them.