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How would you feel if someone always knew where you are or whom you call? If it's someone you trust, that would have been OK, but what if it's one of your phone apps? Would you be OK with that?
In this module, we're going to talk about how to automatically revoke access to certain permissions when it comes to applications, how to delete temporary files, and how to stop the notifications.
Let me talk about why this is needed. We've brought about Facebook in the last example, and in this example, I want to use the same app because usually social media applications require the most access to permissions, and it's an extreme case. So if you know how to use this, if you have access to the information on how to handle social media applications, you'll probably be fine with everything else. Me as a social media creator, trust me, I know this. Now, when it comes to downloading certain applications, let's say again, Facebook for example, sometimes you don't use certain features such as you don't upload photos, videos, or sometimes you don't want to give them access to your location.
Now you have hundreds of applications, sometimes dozens of applications on your phone, and imagine if you haven't used Facebook in a while, and Facebook keeps asking for access to your location. This could have two implications. This could have an implication when it comes to your privacy. Imagine them keep checking your location information every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, and imagine you have dozens of applications. Now, every single app is doing this and it's draining your battery. Imagine asking for access to your GPS module every single time. It's going to drain your battery. Sometimes people wonder why that happens.
Well, this is because of that. I'm going to show you exactly how to revoke this access. Also, other people might have a problem with this because they would say, well, if I'm not using Facebook, why would I want to give them access to my information such as my location, such as my contacts, such as access to my calendar, for example. If you have dozens of applications for battery consumption reasons, and also for reasons that you do not want your privacy to be compromised, and you don't want these applications to use things when it comes to your privacy, these things can be revoked. Here's exactly how to do that.
For example, Facebook. Press and hold your finger on Facebook, then tap on a little eye icon. In here, if you tap on permissions, as we've done in the previous module, you're going to see that at the very bottom it says, unused settings. If you read really carefully, it says, remove permissions, delete temporary files, and stop notifications. As you've noticed, something in the middle, delete temporary files. Temporary files are normally accumulated if you're using a certain application in order to make the way the application runs much quicker.
Let me give you an example. For example, you load Facebook. Let's go and load Facebook. Let's go and open up one of my pages over here. Imagine when you open Facebook, all of these things have to load. Now, there's dynamic assets, for example, things that keep changing all the time, random things, that's random people, random posts that come up. But, for example, the picture of hardware savvy or Droid savvy is always there. Why load that picture every single time if you can have that preloaded on the phone in order to make the access to the information or to have the app open as quickly as possible?
The more stuff you can load from the phone and the less stuff you can load from the Internet by using your data connection, you're not only using less data, you're also loading the application quicker. This is important for application manufacturers to have in place because it improves the Android experience. Now you understand why. It's also called cache, by the way. Sometimes people say, well, delete the cache, it's going to free up space and it's going to make your applications faster. Not in all cases. In fact, if you delete the cache, initially, after you run the application afterwards, after deleting cache, you may experience slower load speeds. Why? Because it needs to load all those assets onto your phone every single time.
Then next time you load it, it's going to compare what's changed, what hasn't changed, and it's going to not load what hasn't changed. Now, if you go back and tap on the Facebook application, here's an alternative way of accessing it. Tap on the little F at the app header and then tap on App Info. Now you're here. If you go back to permissions, as you can see, this toggle is automatically on. It could be off, for example. So what you can do, you can go back and you don't have to turn it on for every single application, but you may want to do this. On most phones, on some Android phones, this is already turned on automatically because they care about your privacy, security, and your space savings when it comes to your phone. So once again, pause app activity if unused.
To summarize, in this video, we're talking about how to pause the activity, which is really easy to do. However, a lot of people don't really understand why this could happen. We've already talked about space savings, battery implications, negative battery implications, as well as privacy reasons. This is it, folks. In a future video, in the next video, I really want to explore more things when it comes to privacy and gaining manual control. Sometimes you don't want to do this on per app level. Sometimes you want to see what permissions, for example, which apps have permissions to my camera?
Show me all of them. Which apps have permissions to my GPS location or contact? Show me all of them. I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that so you can have more granular control or more high-level control of your applications.
Privacy Training Module 3: Trace Strange App Activity