Privacy and android apps

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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The 11 Best Privacy and Security Apps for Android

Secure your messages, phone calls, and personal data

Hackers and stalkers can intrude into your private business from your email account, text messages, files, browser history, photos, and other items on your smartphone. These Android apps keep your communications, browsing history, data, and additional private information safe and secure.

All of the apps below should be equally available no matter which company makes your Android phone, including Samsung, Google, Huawei, Xiaomi, and others.

Signal

Signal Private Messenger uses end-to-end encryption to keep your messages and voice chats private. It doesn’t require an account; you can activate it using a text message. After you have the app set up, you can import the messages stored on your phone.

You can also use Signal to exchange unencrypted messages or voice calls with non-Signal users, so you don’t have to toggle between apps.

The Signal app is free with no ads.

Signal texts and calls use data. So, be mindful of your data limits and use Wi-Fi (with a VPN) when possible.

Telegram Messenger

Telegram works similarly to Signal but offers some extra features, including stickers and GIFs. There are no ads in the app, and it’s completely free. You can use Telegram on multiple devices, although only on one phone. Unlike Signal, Telegram doesn’t allow you to send messages to non-users.

All messages on Telegram are encrypted. Plus, you can store chats in the cloud or make them accessible only on the device that sent or received them. The latter feature is called Secret Chats, which can be programmed to self-destruct.

Wickr Me

Wickr Me offers end-to-end encrypted text, video, picture messaging, and voice chat. It includes fun stickers, graffiti, and photo filters. It also has a shredder feature that permanently removes all deleted messages, images, and videos from your device.

Like Signal and Telegram, Wickr Me is cost- and ad-free.

ProtonMail

ProtonMail is an email service based in Switzerland. It requires two passwords, one to log in to your account and the other to encrypt and decrypt your messages. Encrypted data is stored on the company’s servers housed under 1,000 meters of granite rock in a bunker.

The free version of ProtonMail includes 500 MB of storage and 150 messages per day. The premium ProtonPlus plan bumps up the storage to 5 GB and the message allotment to 300 per hour or 1,000 per day. The ProtonMail Visionary plan offers 20 GB of storage and unlimited messages.

Silent Phone — Private Calls

If you regularly use your phone as a phone, ensure your calls have the same level of protection as your texts and emails. Silent Phone encrypts your phone calls, offers secure file sharing, and has a self-destruct feature for text messages.

A paid subscription includes unlimited calls and messages.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a search engine with a duck for a mascot and a twist: it doesn’t track your search activity or target ads to you based on your data. The downside to the search engine not collecting information about you is that search results aren’t as tailored as Google’s. It comes down to choosing between customization and privacy.

Tor Browser

The Tor browser protects your privacy by preventing websites from identifying your location and individuals from tracking the sites you visit. To use Tor, you need an accompanying app such as OrBot to encrypt your internet traffic.

Ghostery Privacy Browser

Say you checked out a pair of sneakers on Amazon but didn’t buy them. Now you see ads for those same sneakers on every site you visit, as though they’re a ghost following you around. Ghostery minimizes the access to your data used by the ad trackers that enable this process. You can view the trackers and block any you’re not comfortable with.

The app also allows you to quickly clear your cookies and cache (which further helps minimize the ghost factor). Also, you can choose from eight search engines, including DuckDuckGo.

Avira Phantom VPN

Open Wi-Fi connections, such as those offered at coffee shops and public places, are vulnerable to hackers who can tunnel in and capture your private information. A VPN such as Avira Phantom VPN encrypts your connection and your location to keep snoops out.

Avira Phantom VPN offers up to 500 MB of data monthly and ups that to 1 GB if you register. Phantom VPN offers free and paid apps.

Adblock Browser

Ads help many websites and apps pay the bills. Some ads are often intrusive, obstructing something you’re reading or getting in the way of a good user experience. This situation can be especially frustrating on a small screen. Worse, some ads contain tracking or malware.

As with its desktop counterpart, Adblock Browser for Android allows you to block all ads and safelist the sites you like to support.

AppLock

Passing your phone around to share pictures or handing it to your child to let them play a game may make you a little uncomfortable, and it’s easy to understand why. Anyone with access to your phone has the potential to see something you don’t want them to see.

AppLock enables you to keep apps you’re not using locked with a password, PIN, pattern, or fingerprint. Locking your apps provides an added security layer if your phone is lost or stolen and someone manages to get past the lock screen. You can also use it to secure images and videos in your Gallery app.

AppLock uses a random keyboard and invisible pattern lock to avoid giving away your password or pattern. You can also prevent others from disabling or uninstalling the app.

Applock has a free, ad-supported option, or you can pay to get rid of the ads.

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10 best privacy apps for Android to keep your anonymity intact

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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.

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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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