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How to Protect Your Privacy on Android

You might also be interested in our privacy tips for iPhone.

Follow these easy steps to protect the personal data on your Android devices, and don’t forget that can include TVs and other dedicated devices as well as phones and tablets. Also note that the instructions below may differ slightly depending on your version of Android.

1. Minimize Google’s data collection.
On most Android devices you don’t have to sign in with your Google account, although some services may be limited. Also make sure you review your Google activity profile at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity.

2. Lock down your device.
Use a PIN or ideally an alphanumeric password to lock your device.
How: Settings > Security > Screen lock

3. Encrypt the device to protect the data stored on it.
Note that a PIN or password needs to be set to do this, and the device needs to be plugged in.
How: Settings > Security > Encrypt phone/tablet

4. Keep the device’s software up-to-date.
Good advice for any device, not just Android.
How: Settings > About phone/tablet > System Update

5. Be wary of third-party app stores.
Also, don’t allow installation of apps from “unknown sources” unless you’re very confident in the source.
How: Settings > Security > Unknown sources

6. When installing an app, check its permissions first.
Think carefully about whether to continue installation if it’s requesting access to sensitive data. Seek out apps that require the minimum permissions necessary, like our search app.

7. Review permissions for installed apps.
You may have missed changes during updates or perhaps changed your opinion of what’s acceptable. Remove apps you no longer use, and consider replacing some with ones that request the minimum permissions necessary to do their jobs like DuckDuckGo (us) for search.
How: Settings > Apps > [app name]

8. Consider which apps you want syncing with the cloud.
Not syncing apps will limit the data they send to the cloud.
How: Settings > Accounts section > [app name]

9. Hide private notifications.
Stop apps from showing notification content in the lock screen (newer versions of Android only).
How: Settings > Sound & notifications

10. Review default apps.
Assess your default applications, making sure you trust critical communication apps like email, SMS, and browser (newer versions of Android only).
How: Settings > Apps > ⚙ icon > Default

11. Don’t share your location with apps.
Stop individual apps accessing your location (newer versions of Android only).
How: Settings > Apps > ⚙ icon > App permissions > Location

12. Don’t share your location with Google.
Stop Google services tracking your location, and reset your location history.
How: Settings > Location > Google Location History

13. Consider using a non-Google version of Android.
One popular example is LineageOS, based on CyanogenMod, although this requires technical knowledge to install on your device.
How: Be aware of the risks and follow the install guides.

14. Set DuckDuckGo as your default search engine.
We (DuckDuckGo) are the search engine that doesn’t track you. Although it’s not possible to add us in Android’s built-in browser because Google doesn’t include us as an option (go figure), there are several other browsers you can use. You can also add us to your homescreen — visit our homepage for instructions.

15. Install the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser.
Our mobile app has built-in tracker network blocking, smarter encryption, and, of course, private search, all designed to operate seamlessly together while you search and browse the web.
How: Get the app from https://duckduckgo.com/app

General note

When using Google services and apps on Android and elsewhere, you can control your data by:

Reviewing and limiting Google’s tracking of your activity in your My Activity page. See our post on deleting your Google history.

Congratulations! You’ve just taken a big step to increasing mobile privacy and protecting the data on your Android device. You may also be interested in the Tor community’s efforts to harden Android further. You might also be interested in our privacy tips for iPhone.

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8 Best Android Apps To Improve Privacy and Security

Just to have a good anti-virus protection app in your smartphone doesn’t mean a complete Security.

As Mobile Device Security is comprised of security of different features, such as:

• Data privacy and security features
• Permission restrictions for snoopy apps
• A blacklist for undesired calls
• An excellent backup capability, in case your smartphone gets deteriorated.
• As well as encryption functionality.

TextSecure Private Messenger (Free)

Your private conversations will be even safer if both parties are chatting directly through the TextSecure app, but the ability to encrypt your standard SMS messages makes it different from other secure messaging apps.

RedPhone: Private Calls (Free)

The Red phone app, created by Open Whisper Systems, is completely open source and free to download from Google Play Store.

Crypt4All Lite (AES) — (Free File Encryption Software)

Nobody except you can access and read those files that have been protected by a Unicode as your password, until or unless you don’t share your password with the second person.

Orbot: Proxy with Tor (Free Privacy and Online Anonymity)

You can Download Orbot app for Free from Google Play Store.

AppLock (Free Application Lock Utility)

You can Download AppLock for Free from Google Play Store.

App Ops (Free App Permission Manager)

However, App Ops is still accessible on Android 4.3, 4.4.0 or 4.4.1 if your device is rooted. If you have upgraded your Smartphone to Android 4.4.2 then you need to first launch a root authentication and then reboot your device.

LastPass Password Manager Premium (Free)

You can Download LastPass for Free from Google Play Store.

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10 best privacy apps for Android to keep your anonymity intact

Read more:

Bitwarden Password Manager

Price: Free

Bitwarden Password Manager is a free password manager with a lot of great features. To start, it has AES-256 bit encryption, salted hashing, and PBKDF2-SHA-256 encryption and that’s a lot better than most. Additionally, your stuff is encrypted on your device before it ever syncs to your other devices so literally nobody (not even the developers) can see your information. The app also does quite well in terms of password management. You can store your various passwords and even create new ones that are a lot stronger than what you probably have now. Finally, the app is open source on Github in case you ever want to see how the app works yourself.

Bouncer

Price: $0.99

Bouncer is an outstanding privacy app. It even won our best app of the year for 2018. This app lets you automatically remove permissions from apps with very little effort. So, for instance, you want to check in to a place on Facebook. You can enable location permission and then set Bouncer to automatically remove that permission after 15 minutes. Thus, Facebook no longer has the permission ever. Permission management is a great way to protect your privacy from nosy apps. Bouncer makes that process infinitely easier. Android 11 and 12 both have improved the permission system quite a bit and it’s easier to control from the OS than ever before, but Bouncer still has a place for folks who want to micromanage their permissions.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser

Price: Free
DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser is one of the most popular privacy apps. The app uses DuckDuckGo as its search engine and it’s one of the friendliest search engines for private use. It does the usual stuff for a privacy browser like forcing HTTPS everywhere, email tracker protection, website and social media tracker protection, and you can close all of your tabs and delete your browsing data at the push of a single button. It even comes with GPC built-in and automatically tells sites you want to opt-out of tracking. It’s not quite as powerful as something like Firefox in terms of functionality, but it’s definitely the most trusted and private web browser on the list.

Firefox

Price: Free

Firefox is an excellent browser for privacy. It’s mainstream enough to be usable on a variety of platforms and still has things like bookmark and password syncing. However, it also includes native tracker blocking, ad-block add-ons, and some other privacy-minded things. You can even change your search engine if you need to. We used to recommend Firefox Focus for this list, but most of the Firefox Focus features were integrated directly into Firefox. We like that since Firefox is the better of the two browsers in terms of functionality.

GlassWire

Price: Free / $4.99 per year

GlassWire is one of the better privacy apps. It does two things. The app monitors your data usage. That’s useful for those who have metered data on their phone plans. It also shows you the apps using your data in real-time. You can see whenever an app connects to its servers or uses your data. You can adjust your usage or app selection accordingly with that knowledge. It’s great for removing apps that use data a little too liberally for your tastes. The app also has some customization features for monitoring and other stuff. This is a good one folks, and $4.99 per year is basically pocket change.

Read more:

Musicolet

Price: Free

Musicolet is an interesting music player app. It plays your stored music without any fuss. The app boasts a few decent features, like multiple queues, playlist support, album art, and tag editing. It also manages to do all of this without Internet permissions and that’s a rarity in this space. You don’t have to worry about it using any extraneous permissions or sending any info back to any servers. Music apps don’t typically mess with people’s privacy. Still, it’s nice that an option like this one exists. It’s also a totally free app with no advertising (obviously).

ProtonVPN

Price: Free trial / $4-$24 per month

VPNs are among the very best privacy apps. They let you connect to a virtual network that hides what you do from the actual network. This basically lets you browse without anyone knowing what you’re doing (or even where you are). We’ll start by recommending ProtonVPN. It’s a free VPN with a no logging policy. It also boasts encryption, full transparency, and more. You can get VPNs with more features and higher bandwidth, but they usually cost money. This one is great for people who just need something to pay a bill online while at the airport or other sensitive tasks that they don’t want their ISP (or anyone connected to public WiFi) to see. There is a premium option as well if you want faster speeds and P2P support. We have a whole list of other excellent VPNs here if you want to look at more.

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