Do you own your information : Android phone as an example !

First Published : TUESDAY, JULY 31, 2012 AT 7:54PM

Here is my experience using Android phone. I am an Apple fan and *nix user since 15 years. A friend of mine recommended that I give Android a try looking into all the limitation of the iPhone in terms of 3rd party Apps. Also, I was having a bit hard time with my iPhone after upgrading to ISO 5 (the problem was fixed after updating to the next version). 

Back to our story, I bought Samsung SII and the first impression was great experience. The must feature I liked in Android is the sharing options thats built almost in every Apps with a lot of different services options. Also, I had major problem with the battery. The phone need to be connected the whole day to the charger.

I have noticed that Samsung is just syncing all the time with the different services that does not look to make sense, since Apple is only pushing the changes, it seems that Android is just syncing over and over whether there is change or not. My friend advised to let the sync be manual which eliminate the syncing feature in my point of view, social need to be real time. 

All of above is tolerant. What makes me really mad is when I installed an App called avast http://www.avast.com/free-mobile-security

After running the application I was shocked to see how many application is tracking my location, reading my contacts, sms, identity and others. Here is a snap shot of avast scan.

The above picture shows that 45 apps is tracking my location, 72 reading my identity, 19 accessing my SMSs and 42 accessing my contacts. 

Here is a snap shot of the Apps (partial list) that are tracks my location 

 Here is a partial list of the applications that accesses my SMSs 

Here is another partial list of the applications that accesses my accounts.

After finding this. I have decided to go back to my iPhone. Although, I could not find a similar application that can scan iPhone Apps to bring the results. You can control the Apps from tracking your locations and embed the location metadata in your photos.