Are there any apps to block trackers etc… For apps? For example the “I don’t care about cookies” extension or Ghostery for Firefox and Chrome. I use mullvad DNS but is there anything like those above for apps that can reject all cookies automatically, or block them?
The amount of cookies to deny in just the app in the video alone is crazy (video attached).
There are apps that block third party ads and trackers in most apps(Rethink DNS, Adguard) but some apps like facebook, youtube, etc use app tunneling to keep another app from being able to manipulate it’s traffic.
Use a browser instead of the app, if you can. I don’t use the YouTube app for example.
Most guaranteed option I can think of is to reverse engineer your apps while hoping you are neither getting banned from them, or getting arrested for a few years if you are in a jurisdiction that criminalizes reverse engineering.
As others have mentioned, and you’ve no doubt discovered, this is a fairly complex issue that varies from app to app and service to service.
So let’s take this piece by piece:
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Is there an app that can automatically choose options within my other apps to deny tracking/disable telemetry collection? - No, and even if there was, I wouldn’t use it. Unlike websites where they are relying heavily on a well-known standard - browser cookies - to store and retrieve statistics about your behaviors, apps are running code locally on your device that can do much, much more than your browser can. They have their own configuration formats, varying UI designs, etc, that make a “one-size-fits-all” solution difficult, if not impossible. Further, any app that tried to do this would likely need capabilities that are risky, like full screen-reading and arbitrary app interaction, access to all other apps’ storage space, etc. There’s just too much danger there for my comfort.
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Will DNS blocking help? - Big ol’ “it depends.” If telemetry collection is happening through separate internet traffic to known telemetry/advertising endpoints, yes. These are common for smaller apps, where they need to use third party services instead of rolling their own solutions, but bigger companies like Facebook or Twitter¹ will often bundle their telemetry with other service-critical traffic so you can’t block it without crippling the app.
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So what now? - I recommend LAN-wide DNS blocking via something like Pihole over the VPN providers (if you’re only looking for DNS blocking, and not request origination obfuscation) because it gives you much tighter control over what is and isn’t blocked, what block lists are used, etc. Of course that requires some tech skills to get set up and maintain it. Then default to using browser-based websites over apps.
¹ I’ll stop dead-naming Twitter when Elon stops dead-naming his kid
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No, because that’s not about cookies, it’s about data sharing. But I haven’t seen any way to automate rejection. I’m pretty sure that GDPR requires an easier way to reject them all, though, so this app is probably noncompliant.
Bottom line, I personally would just use a different app. What are you using that for? You shouldn’t really need to manage resource usage on an Android phone. The stock OS resource manager should handle everything just fine.
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Check out Tracker Control https://trackercontrol.org/
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You might want to take another look at “I don’t care about cookies.” IIUC in a lot of cases it auto-accepts. If you want a tool to auto-reject, try Consent-o-matic
Thanks, since great options there I don’t actually use “I don’t care about cookies”, but I do use ghostery.
Will have a look at them now. I’m guessing I won’t be able to use a VPN at the same time as tracker control.
Correct. You cannot use TC and a VPN at the same time.
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