Be careful uploading pictures to the web.

[pc747]

Ray Hodge posted a video on note 2 forums that I believe deserve its own thread as this is an important matter. As android enthusiasts hoping for the latest and greatest to dissect we at time forget that not every one is die hard android fans who could recover devices in their sleep. There are many of our friends, family members, church members, and co-workers who are still trying to figure out how to navigate the ends and outs of their phones. When manufacturers lock bootloaders they are the ones they are protecting and have to look out for. I want to take the time in this thread to discuss a few tips and tricks to help the new users protect themselves while they learn their phone.

 

[mountainbikermark]

Location location location. Make sure it is unchecked in your camera settings, social media settings and any other places you might upload photos to.
And for goodness sake, if you call in sick to work never ever EVER upload photos of your excursion to the park/beach/wherever.

Support Our Troops! !!!
<><
From a Beano

 

[pc747]

Turning off location services

[video=youtube;N2vARzvWxwY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vARzvWxwY[/video]

Having location services geotag pictures is a really cool feature. Whether you are on a nice vacation, at a sporting event, or snapping a pic of your favorite hang out geo tagging can help people know where you are at so they can go to that location later or meet you there in the future. The flip side of that is that sadly there are people out there who look to take that information and use it for bad purposes. If you plan on sharing a picture of your home, family photos of a kid's school, or somewhere you do not want your location shared make sure to turn location services off. Not only will that help save on battery life of your phone but if you post a pic on facebook, blogs, forums, or a website some random person can not find your location based off a pic from the net.

The video shows how to do that on an iphone I will show you on android.



1) click on google settings app
2) click on location
3) turn off location services

Also open facebook app and go into facebook settings and disable messaging location.

You can always turn those back on if you want to geotag a location (ie vacation).

 

[pc747]

Be careful what apps you download

Google has done a much better job with controlling the app store than when it was "the Market". Now that they have money coming in from movie studios, music record labels, app developers, book publishers, and manufacturers to sell devices they are wanting to make sure a few rouge apps don't burn down the market burning up their cash cow in the process. With that said there are apps that manage to make their way on the market and though they are quickly removed they may be on long enough for people to download and install.

Here are my rules of thumb with installing apps from the market

1) Look at the number of downloads. I have no desire to be a beta tester so if I do not see at least 100 downloads or more I will pass. In a market this big if an app is good enough it should reach that number easily.

2) Ratings: If the app rating is not 3.5 or better I will not install. Before I install an app I look at the ratings and the common complaints. If 99% of the people who download complaints of freezing chances are it will freeze on your device as well. So pay attention to the ratings and reviews.

3) Avoid apps from the web: One of the cool things about android is you can download and install apps from the internet but now that is just too risky. Unless you know the developer and are comfortable with the app do not install an app unless you get it from the play store.

The google play store has come a long way since the old motorola droid days. It has gone from few named apps with a lot of no names to being full of the popular apps found on the apple market. What sets android play store a part from apple is that many of the apps are free or around the $1-$3 range. You will find very few apps that can place a $19.99 price tag and sell because most will just get the free alternative this is opposed to the apple market where I saw an app at one time selling for $100. Development has really picked up and their are a lot of cool apps out there just take a few moments to watch what you download that few minutes may save you hours of frustration later.

 

[pc747]

Theft protection/device security

Our phones are our lives we have pictures of our family, our home, bank info, car info, everything about us is on this little device and it can be scary to lose it or have it stolen. So here are some tips to help with that.

1) Cloud services: services like google+ and dropbox are good for storing pictures and files in the cloud. One of the things I love about google+ is it auto back up your photos (to save on data consumption I set it to only back up over wifi) and this saved my bacon one day when I soft bricked my nexus and had to fastboot factory images to recover it. To be able to go to my g+ and see those pictures made that moment a little easier to deal with. If you have files or pictures you do not want to lose back them up to a cloud service. Many of them offer free space. I personally have a g+ and a dropbox account so that I had more free space in the cloud.

2) Security lock the device: Whether it be pattern or pin code lock the device. This will keep most people from being able to get into your device if you loose or have the device stolen.

3) 2 step verification: This is a biggie. Turn on 2 step verification I had my gmail account hacked twice once when someone had their twitter hacked and I was one of their contacts so when I opened an email I thought was from them I got hacked. The headache of cleaning up the mess, wiping your device, and apologizing to every one else in your contact list who got an email can all be avoided by turning it on.

[video=youtube;zMabEyrtPRg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMabEyrtPRg[/video]


4) Remote wipe apps: You can find a couple of apps on the market that can locate and remotely wipe your phone. In fact android has released one of their own.
[video=youtube;RwCA8YN2K3I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwCA8YN2K3I[/video]

5) If you use apps like google wallet, lemon wallet, or purchase items on your device whether it be ebay, amazon, etc I highly recommend you go to a bank and open a separate account with a separate card for online device purposes and/or make sure your bank have fraud protection. I personally have a separate account and card for that in case something happen only the little money in that account is compromised vs all my money and now I am unable to buy food or get gas until my bank figures out and fixes the problem. Murphy will have it where my money would be gone on a weekend where I have 2 days of work, close to E on the gas tank, and was planning on hitting the grocery store before work.

 

[pc747]

I am now opening this up to you guys to share some tips, tricks, and apps. This thread is mainly geared to those who are not rooted (or understand what that is) so if you post an app try and post a market link as well and make sure it will work on stock devices.

Thanks

 

[pc747]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lsdroid.cerberus&hl=en

[video=youtube;c9APdySU4hI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9APdySU4hI[/video]

 

[pc747]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lsdroid.cerberus&hl=en

[video=youtube;c9APdySU4hI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9APdySU4hI[/video]

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 2

 

[pc747]

Playing around with cerebus I have to say that it is worth the 5 bucks. Be interesting to see how far google will go with their version.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 2

 

[johnomaz]

I use Cerebus on my phone and my wife's phone. My wife uses it to find it in the house when she loses her phone. It'll sound an alarm that she can track down. I have it so if I get my phone stolen, I can hopefully find it. You can also use Google's device manager to locate your device and wipe the data: https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager?hl=en

Another good one is called Seekdroid. It is a paid service but there is a few free options and location of the device is one of them.

I personally hate geotagging pictures. I disable it first time every time. My wife was mad when I told her to disable it. She liked seeing the location in Facebook when she posted pictures. I won that argument needless to say.

 

[dgstorm]

Excellent thread pc747! Thanks for sharing this!

 

[dezymond]

It's pretty scary to know that the devices we carry around and use so freely are our biggest weakness. We're giving away tons of information about ourselves thinking we're just sharing it with friends once we upload it online.

I like the fact this thread was made and brought up to the community's attention. I also like the fact I saw it on my local news channel just a few hours earlier and that this message is out there. Unfortunately, for many it may be a little too late, their digital footprint has been given. Definitely not too late to change the settings though and be more cautious about what is posted online.

For myself, I have everything off except for access location as I find it useful. I know I've left my digital footprint thousands of times if not more already, but there's still peace of mind knowing some of these location settings are off.

 

[pc747]

The goal when I first posted this was for awareness then I wanted to arm the user with simple solutions. I do not know how many people I come across who are not aware of what their device can do. They still see it as a simple phone and what is even scarier is that a lot of the location and tracking settings are on by default or clicked on with out a user knowing because the app will say "check this to share". Some of us know the traps to look out for while others may over look it not thinking that a device can do what it does. So we just want to make sure the new user knows how to protect their device, protect their information, and know how to secure and locate their device in the event of it being lost or stolen.

 

[trestevenson]

Good information in this thread!
Cerberus is great, by the way. I think I got it for free a few months ago when they were having a 1-day giveaway or something.

 

[JoeyJ]

Thanks for posting I didn't realize there were two options for location access. One under Google settings and one under the location menu in phone settings. Seems kind of sneaky since th both say pretty much the same thing...