Enjoy part 1 of 5 of this Android Academy Privacy Edition mini course.
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Hello and I want to welcome you to the Android Academy Privacy Edition, a series of 20+ videos where you and I are going to learn exactly how to protect your privacy and security on your Android phone.
Why I can’t share this on social media
Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok etc. usually either censor privacy/security-related posts or people don’t find these sexy enough to watch. As a result, these posts perform very poor. I spent around 500 hours researching and even interviewing experts in the field to put this 20+ series of videos together. I simply can’t justify to do so much work and reach so little people.
Instead, I have decided to reach the most important people. You! The HardwareSavvy subscriber community allows me to create high-quality content like this in a sustainable way.
What are we going to explore in this series?
We're going to do three things. At first we're going to learn exactly how is your privacy and security handled on your Android phone. Second of all we're going to learn how to get manual control over your privacy and security. And finally we're going to learn how to take proactive steps and how to protect your privacy and security on your Android phone. Everything that I'm saying you're going to see here and everything that I'm doing you're going to see over here on the left hand side on my interactive Android phone.
Am I qualified to talk about this?
A little bit about my credentials. I'm not a privacy or security expert. If you ever need any privacy or security advice please talk to your professional. What I've done though I've actually worked at T-Mobile for about nine to ten years in the United States and I've encountered thousands of Android users who have actually had privacy and security concerns so I've learned a thing or two ever since the T-Mobile G1 came out, the very first Android phone. So I'm here to provide you with my perspective. In today's video I'm going to teach you exactly in my opinion how the Android operating system works.
I have also took the time to reach out to my colleagues who work in cybersecurity to get a broader context for this series. But again, this does not qualify my as an expert. Please use your best judgement when deciding to implement these. Note that things change at a staggering phase and if certain elements of this training become outdated, I will add additional ones in the future.
Intro into Android Privacy (transcript)
Let's go and pull up our drawing board and what I want you to know is that I want you to think of your Android phone that you're currently holding in your hand as your apartment. Every single thing in your apartment has its own shelf and for example when you were a kid you would try to access your mother's or father's drawer you would ask them for permission to go inside and get something out. Well the Android operating system works exactly the same way as well. So think of your phone like this and think of all of your applications being on your Android phone.
These are all of your applications. Now as you know your phone has a camera, it's got a microphone, it's got your contacts on it. So let's go and draw those. So this is the camera, this is for example is your microphone, that's that. We also have for example your contacts, this is software information, this is information that is hard-coded, not hard-coded, but generated on your phone. That's your contacts, for example even the gyroscope data, for example for collecting your steps. So I'm just going to do steps. You're gonna understand in just a moment what I mean by talking about these. You also have your Wi-Fi adapter.
So every hardware and software component that could potentially compromise your identity or your privacy and security is separated in different drawers. What happens is when you install an application, for example let's say Facebook, Facebook needs to go out there after you install it and say well Android, let's draw a little Android over here, please excuse my drawing, and it's got to say well Android can I please ask for permission to access Arsen's camera, to access Arsen's microphone, to access Arsen's contacts, Arsen's calendar, so on and so forth. You know you see where I'm going right? So every time an application gets installed it needs to ask for permission access. Once the permission access is granted, usually on older Android phones, it stays that way.
On a newer Android phone, there's a way to gain manual control and actually have the system revoke the access if it's not being used just so the applications don't abuse access to your information, which I'm going to explore in future videos and this module as well. So now that you have the understanding of how this works, you can kind of see that every single thing, that every single hardware and software thing that you have on your phone is protected, is meant to be protected by the Android operating system, and nothing has access to the core, which is the reason why when people talk about, for example, rooting your phone, well I want to root my phone, you might have heard about this, so I can have more freedom.
You never know what the Android, this guy kernel, how it has been hard-coded because it's normally done by a third party, not by an official company, and people may have backdoor access where they could influence this guy to give access to whatever they want. Really bad things could happen, which is the reason why, number one thing, is that I do not recommend doing rooting, rooting your phone, and when you buy new phones, I also don't recommend you to not check whether the phone has been rooted or not. There's actually applications out there which I can discuss in future videos on how to check to see if the used phone you've purchased hasn't been rooted because you may potentially compromise your security and privacy. In future modules, the next one coming up, I'm going to talk to you guys about how to see what access these applications have, how to control this access, how to set up automatic revoking of the rights if these rights are not used. For example, if you have a Facebook application and you don't want to give them access to your contacts, you can just revoke that if you want to.
You can do that manually actually, and we can also talk about other proactive steps you can take without using any third-party applications. The second thing I also wanted to tell you about is that using third-party applications for virus scanning and also for having control over your phone are really not necessary. Why? Because the Android operating system, especially the current Android operating system like Android 13 for example or 12 or above, already have these features built into the system.
Don't fall victim of downloading applications like antivirus or privacy control applications that promise you to give you access to all these because in these modules, in these 10 modules, I'm going to teach you exactly how to have control over this and that way you don't need to buy any applications or get any recurring monthly services. So I'm really excited about this one. Thank you so much for watching it and I will see you in module number two.
Privacy Training Module 1: Introduction to Android Privacy