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Say I download an *.apk file from some site or I get one from a friend, could it potentially harm my phone, cost me money etc.? Basically what I'm wondering is, when I install an app it generally says what the app has/wants access to, is this "warning" coded by the programmer to tell the user what it's accessing or is it determined automatically by built in functions? I don't want to install and app that has access to stuff that I'm not aware of.
Regards,
B
Edit: On a second note. Say I do download some harmful application, would uninstalling it solve the problem or could there be remaining harmful files still at work? The whole Android OS is sorta worrying me...bad experiences with Windows is making me cautious.
if you can think of it
there can always be a chance of happening
yes, a malicious hacker could do something like that
yes, a pissed programmer might including something like that into their apps to stop people from sharing their apps without buying it
yes, the apk might be legit but might have been corrupted some how
yes, you might be able to uninstall if lucky
but worse case scenario if i were a malicious hacker i wouldn't code a way to uninstall the app, instead i'll probably code a way to lock the user out of all access forcing you to Flash the phone from scratch
You didn't really answer my one major question, or maybe you did but I didn't understand. Are the services that the app is able to access programmed or are they determined by a function?
Well when installing I've resorted to checking a few things:
1) Make sure the app that I've downloaded is the same size as the one in the market (for equivalent versions...obviously)
2) Compare the system permissions when installing with those found at www.androlib.com
This way seems pretty safe to me. If the size is the same and the permissions are the same...you can be quite (not 100%) certain that they are legit/the same.
Ok heres the deal. Apps have 2 types of access.
1. Standard permissions
So if u don't do adb-install (where u dont see an app's permissions), then market / copy to sdcard and install from there u'll see the permission screen. An app cannot do something w/o permissions. If an uninstaller is askin for email permissions u know somethings wrong.
2. Root
Most dangerous. An app will ask u for 0 standard android api permissions. But when u run it, u will be asked for a superuser allow/deny request. From their its up to you. An app could do anything behind the scenes from tht point.
So read reviews/ user comments before trying root apps. Standard apps, just look over the permissions thts all.
FYI : The permissions are read by android, they're not user defined. Any permissions will always show up when installing it using the native package manager.
To be honest I wouldn't advise downloading an .apk from a non-trusted source. If its on the market, you're near certainly ok, and if its from a trusted developer (say from these boards, or some other similar dev portal) then again, you are likely to be ok. In the second case, you are unlikely to be getting a finished app if you get a straight apk from boards, because when they are finished or at least solid, they go to the app store anyway, so harm in that case is more likely to be of the force close variety rather than bricked variety.
Outside of that, I can't see why you would get an apk from a friend rather than downloading it yourself, simply because that way it makes certain you get a clean, non-corrupted version. If apps don't show up in the market for you, its mostly because your device can't run them, in which case, again, force close.
Uninstalling it is possibly too late. All smartphones suffer this issue though.
As mentioned, if you get the files from market though, you are likely to be safe..
Also, not all melicious programs are obvious..
Daneshm90 said:
Ok heres the deal. Apps have 2 types of access.
1. Standard permissions
So if u don't do adb-install (where u dont see an app's permissions), then market / copy to sdcard and install from there u'll see the permission screen. An app cannot do something w/o permissions. If an uninstaller is askin for email permissions u know somethings wrong.
2. Root
Most dangerous. An app will ask u for 0 standard android api permissions. But when u run it, u will be asked for a superuser allow/deny request. From their its up to you. An app could do anything behind the scenes from tht point.
So read reviews/ user comments before trying root apps. Standard apps, just look over the permissions thts all.
FYI : The permissions are read by android, they're not user defined. Any permissions will always show up when installing it using the native package manager.
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EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thank you.
Btw, just because security on App store says an app can do stuff like make phone calls etc, doesn't mean it's malicious.
A few people were misled by an article that stated that apps with such extreme permissions were malicious, but it's untrue. It isn't always the case, but if an app uses functionality you don't believe it should, it's possible it is dodgy
andrewluecke said:
Btw, just because security on App store says an app can do stuff like make phone calls etc, doesn't mean it's malicious.
A few people were misled by an article that stated that apps with such extreme permissions were malicious, but it's untrue. It isn't always the case, but if an app uses functionality you don't believe it should, it's possible it is dodgy
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Aye, I know. Thanks for the advice. I've actually been comparing any app I download off the internet to the actual ones on the market (size and permissions).
Hi everyone im a noob member to the site but have read some interesting threads before membership but as usual joining when i have a problem that needs some of your help
I have had a .apk file download to my htc desire running 2.2.2. I was browsing pics of the fake kind when it started downloading. i did see some letters and numbers before the file ext. It is not an official .apk that im sure off. I have searched for it on my phone but cannot find it to delete .
can anyone help please
After hooking up htc to my pc by usb lead, I have managed to locate the file by searching. It was in the download folder, I deleted it via the pc and then did a factory reset on htc.
Would this get rid of it safely
I have been wondering if it is possible to modify where programs store their external data on the SD card, but have not been able to find an answer yet.
Example...
I have the program "FolderOrganizer" and it stores it's backup data to /mnt/sdcard/FolderOrganizer. Now what I would like to do is to clean up my SD card a bit by moving all my program saves to the /mnt/sdcard/Android/xxxxx folders. This way I know where all my backups, skins and etc are located at while keeping my file structure clean.
I have been using Root Explorer to poke around and see if I can find any indication of where these programs set their external save directories at (xml files etc), but I have not been able to figure it out yet.
I bet it is something easy that I am just missing. Can anyone help out or point me in the right direction?
djstaid said:
I have been wondering if it is possible to modify where programs store their external data on the SD card, but have not been able to find an answer yet.
Example...
I have the program "FolderOrganizer" and it stores it's backup data to /mnt/sdcard/FolderOrganizer. Now what I would like to do is to clean up my SD card a bit by moving all my program saves to the /mnt/sdcard/Android/xxxxx folders. This way I know where all my backups, skins and etc are located at while keeping my file structure clean.
I have been using Root Explorer to poke around and see if I can find any indication of where these programs set their external save directories at (xml files etc), but I have not been able to figure it out yet.
I bet it is something easy that I am just missing. Can anyone help out or point me in the right direction?
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No... it's not something you're just missing... there is no standard and as a result it's almost impossible to achieve what you're aiming for. I too wish for the same, everything simply under <sdcard>/android/ ...
Some apps are hard coded in their code, some allow the user to select, some store in /data/data/xxx/shared_prefs/ - it's a lottery.
djmcnz said:
No... it's not something you're just missing... there is no standard and as a result it's almost impossible to achieve what you're aiming for. I too wish for the same, everything simply under <sdcard>/android/ ...
Some apps are hard coded in their code, some allow the user to select, some store in /data/data/xxx/shared_prefs/ - it's a lottery.
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Thanks for the response. That is a bummer though, I was really hoping to be able to tell everything where to write to. I currently have a ext4 partition on my SD and that is where all my apps install to... if I can't tell the apps where to save on my SD partition, it would be nice to at least move it all to the ext4 partition.
There is crap all over on my SD card and my OCD is starting to kick in!
Yeah, I know the SD card can get messy... it's really stupid and annoying... Unfortunately, there is no SD card data saving guidelines for developers... and writing to an ext partition is completely out of scope for market apps because not all users have ext partitions... it would be nice, though, to have apps save data under one common folder... say /sdcard/data or /sdcard/Android... maybe we need to petition developers or Google!!
I agree with the saving to and ext partition. I just think it is silly that you can't at least specify a directory to save external data. I know some apps allow this, but I guess that if Google forced a change then everyone would have to change their code.
I wonder what would happen if you took out your SD and tried running those apps. Where would they write to then?
djstaid said:
I agree with the saving to and ext partition. I just think it is silly that you can't at least specify a directory to save external data. I know some apps allow this, but I guess that if Google forced a change then everyone would have to change their code.
I wonder what would happen if you took out your SD and tried running those apps. Where would they write to then?
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Apps that require the sdcard for storage will usually either give an error when run without an sdcard or just not work at all.
I am also pretty anal about my storage and neatness, and I have given up on my sdcard being organized. What I have done is create folders with capital first letters to bring them to the top of the listing when browsing by default sort, at least I can find what I want easily without sifting through all the data folders..
That is pretty much what I have done. I guess it it better than nothing. If I knew more about programming I would try and build something to look for and modify those paths. I just never really understood/got into the whole programming thing... that is why I ended up in Infrastructure. lol
djstaid said:
That is pretty much what I have done. I guess it it better than nothing. If I knew more about programming I would try and build something to look for and modify those paths. I just never really understood/got into the whole programming thing... that is why I ended up in Infrastructure. lol
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I'm with you there, long time (20+ years) building and repairing pcs, 0- years programming.
As far as building something to modify the paths used by programs accessing the sdcard in Android, that seems a nearly impossible feat. Each program would have to be modified, requiring reverse-coding (baksmali) each one individually, modifying the code, and recompiling (smali). This would also require re-signing and reinstalling each application, making updating from the market impossible, and would take a lot of work.
Due to the fact that applications are "sandboxed" (so to speak) in Android, I wouldn't think there was a global %externaldata% path variable that can be modified from /mnt/sdcard to /mnt/sdcard/Android, I am pretty sure that path is set in each application.
Though, I could be wrong. However, it is worth noting that if it is a global variable, changing it would result in applications that are already properly coded to use /mnt/sdcard/Android/%appname% or /mnt/sdcard/data%appname% to instead attempt to write the data to /mnt/sdcard/Android/mnt/sdcard/Android/%appname% as they would append their string to the global variable.
I believe, all we can do is petition developers to use a more structured data path in their programs, and learn to live with disorder!
daveid said:
I believe, all we can do is petition developers to use a more structured data path in their programs, and learn to live with disorder!
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lmao!
this is true though... at least I know that I am not alone. haha
I am definitely with you all on this. I found this post after having the same epiphany just now. There needs to be more structure to the use of external storage. These little things are what set our OS apart from say, the "forbidden" iphone...
I have actually tried digging into different apps to see where the store locations are set at and have had no luck. I guess if I knew how to program or at least modify that one part of the app I would have more luck.
Problem with that is if I modify something in an app and it gets updated, I would have to do it all over again. I guess that is the gift and curse of having such an open OS. I will post back here if I figure something out though. I have been digging into the Android OS a little more, but I am still having problems understanding how it all works underneath.
So maybe it's just me, but I've been taken off guard by the wipe features on the HTC One clearing /sdcard along with the usual user data a few times. It's a bit of a struggle to find your "happy place" after remembering a couple minutes too late that the bootloader unlock actually erases the media storage too...so much for that nandroid backup you made just in case
Luckily, these phones come with all sorts of backup options right out of the box - but these (DropBox image backup specifically) have a few "quirks" that don't really work in our favor. One that especially ground my gears was the fact that dropbox doesn't play nice with the ZOE's filename-based groupings. So now those 12 ZOE shots you had now show up as 252 individual files. Neat.
So, since I'm overall a very lazy person it's safe to assume I had little to no interest in manually renaming each and every one of these files to make my Zoe collections work again. Ain't nobody got time for that. That's exactly what I made this tool to do for me, because hastily writing a few lines of code sounded way more appealing than fixing all those files just hitting the delete key.
Now, I can't reiterate enough that I'm really lazy. That being said, this tool is poorly written. I even decided that it was easier to simply disable the ability to minimize it rather than bother messing with a crash bug related to that option. Don't worry though, there's still plenty of ways to make this program crash horribly.
So without further ado: I made a thingy, and I'm sharing this thingy that I made with you. In case you're stupid about backing up your media storage, like me.
DISCLAIMER: I AM AN AWFUL PROGRAMMER AND I PUT VERY LITTLE TIME OR EFFORT INTO THIS. I ALSO MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE COAUTHORED THIS WORK IN PARTNERSHIP WITH A BOTTLE OF VODKA. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK, MAKE BACKUPS, AND GENERALLY JUST BE READY FOR DISAPPOINTMENT. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING THIS APPLICATION MAY OR MAY NOT DO.
Using this app is pretty simple.
1) Copy your defiled Zoe images to a new folder (I can't promise you that this thing won't screw up, so make sure to work with COPIES of the files!). I didn't trust this with my original backups and neither should you!
2) Open the application and choose the directory that you copied the files to.
3) All the JPG files in that folder will be listed in the upper list, these may or may not be in correct order because the backup function doesn't even name them in a way that always sorts correctly. Focus on one Zoe at a time and use the arrows to put the files from that set in the correct order.
4) Use Ctrl/Shift+Click to select all 20 images from that Zoe's set.
5) Once you've selected 20, the app will try to guess which MP4 file to choose in the box below. This feature is super basic, make sure to double check that it has selected the correct file, correct this selection as necessary.
6) Look in your phone's /DCIM/100media folder to see how high the file numbering goes for the images on your phone. There's a box on the application bottom-right to fill in a number. Type in a number that is NOT already associated with another image on your phone.
7) If everything is selected correctly, the "Rebuild my ZOE" button should become usable. Click it. It should (hopefully) tell you that it has finished working on the selected files.
8) Move the newly renamed IMAGXXXX_ZOEXXX files back onto your phone's internal storage.
9) Rinse and repeat until all your files are renamed appropriately to be recognized as ZOEs.
PS - This application was was written in VB2012 using the .net framework 4.5, if you get errors starting it, make sure you have this framework installed. Source code is available upon request if anyone actually wants to put time into making this suck less, but for me it's "good enough".
Looks very handy.. Thanks
sent from the HTC "one"
Tardeaux said:
I ALSO MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE COAUTHORED THIS WORK IN PARTNERSHIP WITH A BOTTLE OF VODKA.
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Sorry... That little section made me choke! lol You're a funny guy. I can see this being a useful tool though.
Finding this made my day. Thanks man.
Thanks for this, huge time saver! The little preview is a plus to help weed out any accidental inclusions.
I'm glad you guys found this useful
I'm twice as glad that HTC changed the way the Zoes are saved in the new software release :good:
Okay, I'm running a newly rooted SGH-I537—Firmware: 4.4.2—Baseband: NE3
I rooted it this morning no problem with @geohot's towelroot; worked wonderfully.
My next steps were to backup everything and start removing bloat. Unfortunately, I wasn't even able to get to the back s**t up step, naturally.
When trying to backup the files to the exSDcard, I am told that it is unwritable! Funny thing about that though? When I say f**k it and try the backup anyway, it works for a fraction of a second, stops, and says insufficient storage....but each time I've done this a file leaks through and backs up to the destination, wtf?
I have been scouring these and other android forums looking for a solution to the problem, to no avail.
There was one potential solution, linked here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=44370296
But, naturally, it didn't work. I mean, I copied to the platform.xml file to my computer, did the necessary edits, and when I tried to paste it back into etc/permissions it wouldn't. So I thought, "maybe I have to edit it from it's location", NOPE! That doesn't work either; won't let me save with modifications. Granted, this method was for a different phone, but then again, so was the root method I used.
Which brings up another point: if I'm rooted, and ES File Explorer has superuser access, why can't I edit a simple .xml file?!
I apologize if this post comes off a little irritated, but I f**king am!
Anyone who can help with this will have my sincere gratitude and advanced thanks.......or I'm taking my phone to the shooting range.
*Warning: Irate rant contained below!*
It's like the folks at Android were sitting around the conference room—brainstorming—when someone spoke up and said, "GUYS! I've got a great idea! For this next update, let's not actually improve things, but rather(!), let's make our platform LESS functional! The consumers will love it! And I've got just the thing! You know how you used to be able to write things to the SD card?! Uh uh uh, NOT ANYMORE! Now what we'll do is pick things out of this hat I have here, whatever comes out is the functionality the end user loses!" And everyone just nodded in agreement! *rage*Oh.My.F**king.God! Who are these people and why is their incompetence so unfathomably pervasive?!
It's not just Android, but EVERY major tech company! Windows 8: Great example! Live Messenger/Skype merger: Great example! Apple(I mean, that's why we're all here, right?): Great example!
I could go on, but that's not why I am here, that's why I am in college.
Thanks (in advance) again guys.
Yes, I know how to use google, yes, I tried many things now and I don't know where else to look for help so I'm asking here, a place with many smart heads full of ideas.
I was doing pretty normal thing on my phone this morning, just trying to copy all the files from internal memory onto the PC. Of course I couldn't do that thanks to "Unspecified error" during copying some of the folders, including Downloads and DCIM. I managed to copy only some of the files from internal storage. I thought a reboot might help. And so the nightmare began. All the other files I wanted to copy disappeared from gallery and Total Commander. They must be on the phone though, as there is something on the phone that uses 2gb of memory. I did not delete them, the system just fails to see them. I already tried deleting all the ".nomedia" files, clearing cache and data from Media Storage app, disabling it, rebooting and enabling again but it was of no use. I'm helpless and I don't know what to do, why did android even do this? I lost a lot of photos and images and I'm really upset about that. Any ideas what to do? The phone is not rooted, never played with software in it, it's updated to 5.1
Download any File Manager from Play Store, check if the files are on the phone memory. If not, well, they are somehow lost. Maybe you cut-paste them onto your PC, and the files were deleted, but you got an 'unspecified error' on moving.
Thanks a lot for a response. I use Total Commander on every android phone I had, I can see that my files look like they disappeared completely, android just generated empty generic folders ("Pictures etc) after I cut off the previous folders along with their content so I saved a little bit that I could. On the other hand something is occupying 2gb of data but the phone refuses to show what, so there is a chance my files are there. After copying the whole content of the phone to the folder on desktop it just shows it weight few hundreds KB. I'll be trying to use some recovery software for android. The question is how did this happen at all? It had no right to happen, what if this happened to someone who has completely no idea about that stuff? Who's to blame and who's responsible for helping such a person? Motorola? Google? Anyway, this is the last phone with no micro-sd card slot I used. A memory card is the best backup
You COULD recover your files even if they were deleted if Android still had a mass storage mode. I don't think any of the data recovery softwares play nice with the MTP transfer that android offers. Of course, the SD card is infinitely better, but a rarity these days. I am sorry for your lost data. You seem like you did everything within your reach to get it back.
EDIT: Just to be sure, did you cut-paste the folders on your PC from phone, or just copy-paste. It might be possible for files to be deleted in cut-paste, if some error occurs in copy.
Thanks for contributing. It seems Google knows better then any of us what we need and there's no more Mass Storage option which gives free access to memory. Unfortunately I don't have that option. First I ensured which files are not affected by error by trying to copy them folder after folder. Then there were left files I couldn't copy, it was DCIM with most recent photos (unfortunately) and download where I kept lots of images with cool infographics found on the internet. I thought a reboot would help to get access to them and you know the rest. Files were there no longer. I'm seriously considering switching to Windows Phone, it seem it's too much to ask for a phone that just "werks" nowadays...I have a painful lesson to use memory card as well as cloud synchronizing but didn't give up yet, still trying anything I can I also wrote to Motorola with help request but I don't think they'll help me any better than people here, although it's more their responsibility to fix that stuff, the phone is barely 6 months old.