CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidprivacy
Andrew Guenther
Andrew Guenther

Reputation: 1492

How to know what data an Android app is sending out

How would you find out what kind of information an Android app is sending back to the "mothership"? For example, if an app is sending your ID, gender, etc. to advertisers.

Is there a way to do this in an Android app? Or would it have to be done via a packet sniffer over Wi-Fi?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4504

Answers (4)

npdoty
npdoty

Reputation: 4757

The TaintDroid project does exactly this. Installing it isn't as simple as just installing an app (of course), but they provide pretty detailed instructions. This tool has been used for exactly the purpose of detecting what kind of information an app is accessing and sending to some external source. They also provide the source code if you want to modify it for particular purposes.

Upvotes: 1

HaMMeReD
HaMMeReD

Reputation: 2462

The permissions tell you what data it is accessing, for example "Phone State" means getting the phones ID, Coarse or Fine Location is a permission to, so for network or gps location you need to be made aware.

Other data is behind other permissions. So if they aren't cheating you can somewhat figure out what they are using.

Upvotes: 0

StanislavK
StanislavK

Reputation: 1962

You might check Android packet sniffer.

Unfortunatelly, you have to be root on your phone, and have the "su" command installed.

Upvotes: 1

Yann Ramin
Yann Ramin

Reputation: 33177

  1. Root your device.
  2. Find a copy of tcpdump for Android
  3. Launch tcpdump, capture a dump file.
  4. Analyze offline with something like Wireshark.

Upvotes: 3

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