Is there anything similar to Privacy Guard in Ubuntu Touch?
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Hello. LineageOS has something called Privacy Guard, which stems from a function that first came about back in the CyanogenMod days (see https://www.androidcentral.com/cyanogen-os-privacy-guard-keeping-apps-seeing-your-data). It seems a good thing to have. Is there anything similar in Ubuntu Touch?
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You can read up on the access policies here:
http://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/appdev/platform/apparmor.html
Similar, but not exactly the same.
But also: since AFAIK for now there aren't really any malicious closed source apps like WhatsApp that would warrant such measures on UT, it isn't really necessary. Maybe rather than looking for such stop gap solutions, it would be better to reconsider using apps that clearly do not act in the best interest of its users?
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@MarkG_108 Hi Mark,
There is no need of such extra feature in UT.
UT is privacy by design, so if the user is careful, that's up to him to achieve the desired level of privacy.Read more about confinement in UT...
Happy holidays !
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You can install uAdBlock from the Openstore to stop guess what (clue in name) and stuff but thats it really.
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@Lakotaubp I was going to install UAdBlock, but it required my password(!), so I thought, "nope". It's the one app that requires full system access, which to me seems like overkill for something that's supposed to filter ads. I asked about it elsewhere on this forum, and no one else found it odd, but, as I said, it seemed like overkill to me.
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@MarkG_108 It's not the only one UTTweakTool does the same. Both are only allowed on the OpenStore as the developers of both apps are very highly trusted not to be up to no good. Both need full access to do what they do. Both are very useful tools. uAdBlock applies list that you can choose from to block a range of stuff not just ads, but the choice is completely up to you. I have both without the slightest worry.
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The way uAdBlock blocks ads is by mapping certain domain names known to be add providers to localhost (127.0.0.1). To do that it needs to modify the /etc/hosts file. And to do that it needs super user permissions. That is why it requests your password.
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@Lakotaubp Thanks, that's good to know. I'll give it another look.
Regarding OpenStore and what's allowed there, I must say there seems to be some odd stuff there. Like what is this? --> https://open-store.io/app/eutd.hello.world And no, I haven't tried it. Or recently I saw some app for Pornhub, which, from the source, appears to be just an html page with the header "Hello World!"
I hate to say it, but sometimes going through the OpenStore feels like wading through broken down trash looking for an occasional pearl. -
@MarkG_108 pornhub will be removed soon.
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@thilov That's good. It looked like a useless app. I'm curious too about the EUTD_HELLO_WORLD app. There's not even a description of what it is.
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@MarkG_108 Any app is useless, if you don't need it. Just because something is useless to you, doesn't mean it's useless to everyone. The "Hello World" thing is probably an example app. There are several example apps in the store. This is no different on other app stores, so there's no need to denigrate our store with such unkind words, simply because there aren't millions of apps covering up the few you don't care about.
