Privacy features in Touch (cyanogenmod)?

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Matt B. wrote on 03/07/13 15:00:
> ...
> 
> I too am concerned about a lot of "are you sure" dialogs. I think 
> people are just looking for a way to learn/know what apps are 
> connecting to the internet (and why). Like I described how VLC
> asks to connect for downloading album art/info and tells you why it
> would be connecting to the internet. Once the user responds to this
> dialogue there are no more dialogues--ever. The App asks for
> permission to connect to the internet for a specific purpose. If
> the user says No, it would be up to the user to go into settings
> and reset this. The user should not be presented this prompt each
> time the App starts/runs.

With the Ubuntu Touch model, the prompt is shown once ever, not once
each time the app runs. (You shouldn't need to know whether an app is
not "running" anyway.)

However, an app accessing the Internet is not currently on the list of
things that the OS would prompt about. It could be, but I'm not
confident it would be useful. Such a large proportion of apps use the
Internet, that nefarious traffic would often be hidden alongside
legitimate traffic.

> ...
> 
> So I think the most useful OS service is to somehow *give users 
> awareness of App internet connection behavior* so users CAN learn 
> that they need to make a settings adjustment IN THE APP or simply 
> uninstall the App and look for one that isn't so promiscuous with
> the internet. This I think is the privacy/security function of the
> OS that is so important--providing some means of "finding out"
> which Apps are connecting to the internet, which informs the user
> and allows him/her to decide whether to adjust settings in the App
> or uninstall it.
> 
> ...

This is part of the reason I designed the network activity indicator.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Networking#phone-indicator>

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