[Discuss] Syncing Android phones directly

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Tue, Jul 02, 2013 at 02:59:12AM -0400, Tom Metro wrote:
> I'd feel way better about the privacy of Android if it supported a
> per-app permission and network firewall. (WhisperSystems was working on
> this before they got bought up by Twitter.)

On any rooted Android, install DroidWall. There you go: per-app
network firewall. Default permit or default deny, and per-app
permission/denial of each of WiFi and cell connections.

> Then you could disregard some application's declaration that it has
> permission to access your contacts, and simply deny it, knowing that
> you'd be deprived of some bit of ancillary functionality, but the rest
> of the app would still function as designed.

CyanogenMod occasionally offers this in a beta, but they have
not yet settled on anything that doesn't tend to break apps that
aren't expecting it.

> > When it comes to rooting, my main objections are not the inconvenience,
> > but reliability and support.
> 
> I imagine if you chose a mainstream device and a mainstream ROM, support
> would be pretty good. The Android user base is certainly getting big
> enough, so that even with you slice off a fringe of people who bother to
> load a third part ROM, the community is still fairly sizable.

Yes, this. Support for CM and AOKP, at least, is faster than
Google for Nexus devices.

-dsr-