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F-Droid: A security-conscious repository for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications for Android

ARTICLE – F-Droid is an app store and repository for verified Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications for Android (F-Droid Docs page). I first heard about F-Droid from a CNET article in early August. According to CNET, “… 200 Android apps were found infected with malware [on Google Play] in March, followed by July’s discovery of 1,000-plus Android apps harvesting data even after you deny permissions …”. So, in the interest of security and privacy, perhaps places like F-Droid are a nice alternative to Google Play.

F-Droid is a non-profit volunteer open-source project (it is developed and run by the community) and was started by Ciaran Gultnieks in 2010 (F-Droid About page). Since the apps on F-Droid are open-source, it allows anyone to comb through an app’s code to see if there is any questionable activity going on. There are only about 2600 apps available through F-Droid according to CNET, so this may not have much of what you’re looking for. However, if you are curious about F-Droid and want to check out its security, you can peruse their Security Model and view their latest Security Audit Results.

If you want to try F-Droid, you’ll have to download the app from f-droid.org as it is not available through Google Play.



I downloaded the app from my phone’s Chrome browser. When I tapped on the “Download F-Droid” button on the f-droid.org website, I was prompted by my phone that “This type of file can harm your device. Do you want to keep FDroid.apk anyway? Cancel or Ok”. I tapped on “Ok”. Once the APK file was downloaded, I tapped on “Open” next to the downloaded file.



My phone then warned me that “For your security, your phone is not allowed to install unknown apps from this source [Chrome]. Cancel or Settings”. I tapped on “Settings”. I was taken to the “Install unknown apps” screen for Chrome where I toggled on the “Allow from this source” setting, then tapped on the back arrow at the top left of the screen. I was then asked “Do you want to install this application? It does not require any special access. Cancel or Install.” I tapped on “Install”. Once installed, it took a few seconds to update its repositories, then I was able to browse F-Droid for open source apps.

Here is what F-Droid looks like when looking at the Catagories tab.

When I installed my first app, I was prompted by my phone about installing unknown apps from F-Droid. I then had to go to the “Install unknown apps” settings and toggle on “Allow from this source” (in Android 9.0: phone settings > Apps & notifications > Advanced > Special app access > Install unknown apps > F-Droid).

Because the people working on F-Droid are security and privacy-conscious, it piqued my interest, so I thought perhaps it may pique yours if you didn’t already know about it. If you are interested, go to f-droid.org to download it and give it a try!

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F-Droid: A security-conscious repository for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications for Android originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 30, 2019 at 11:00 am.

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Blockada ad blocker Android app review

REVIEW – Let me say first that I understand that many sites use ads as a means for additional funding for their site (including The Gadgeteer). I mean TANSTAAFL (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch).  That being said I’m probably a marketer’s nightmare; my clickthrough rate on ads I do see is probably less than 1% and I actually don’t pay much attention to ads in any media.  I see a kewl ad on television and within an hour I know the ad but have no idea what the actual advertised product or brand is.

Blocking ads on your device can give you a much cleaner screen, protects your privacy and reduces your bandwidth usage. Blockada is a free, open source ad blocker for your Android device which works without root. How good is it? Read on…..

Blockada is a DNS-based ad blocker that (and I’m not going to get too technical here) that redirects all your network traffic to a local VPN interface and only allows queries to hosts that are not blacklisted in your chosen filters.  The filters contain hosts there are known to serve ads, tracking, spam, malware and other “nasties” like that.

You don’t need to have a rooted device to make this work however it’s not available from the Google Play Store as it “interferes with Google’s business model”, so you’ll have to go to Blockada, download the APK, make sure your device allows you to install from unknown sources and install the APK manually.

Once installed and turned on it works on both WiFI and mobile networks and also across all apps, not just the browser (like some ad blockers).

Once you’ve installed it here’s the main interface.  You can see that it’s blocked a fair few ads.  To turn Blockada on or off you just open the app and just hit the on/off button.  You can tell it’s on by the little key in the top right-hand side of my system tray.

Here’s where you can choose what host blacklist files you want.  Each one has strengths and weakness (which are described for each), and you can choose more than one.  Currently, there are 14 available, I use 2. There is also a whitelist for sites you don’t want to apply Blockada to as well.

For further ad, phishing and other bad thing filtering you can also change your DNS provider away from your ISP’s. I tend to use OpenDNS on all my devices.  They can often be faster than your ISP’s and give you an additional level of protection.

There are various other options in the settings tab like how often you want your list updated or if you want Blockada to start on boot.

As mentioned to turn it on or off you can just open the app, but there’s also a toggle in your pull down drawer (2nd from the right) to do this much more easily than having to open the app.

And here’s a typical page rendered on my Chrome Browser without Blockada active (see no key in the top right hand). Note the annoying self-playing ad in the middle of my screen and the small ad bar in the bottom.

Once ad blocker is turned on, no more ads, video or static.  OK, the grey boxes probably aren’t the prettiest but to me, it’s better than the ads. It’s worth noting that in Firefox I just get a grey box with no graphics. You can see because the ad domain is in one of the blacklists, the actual IP address of the site can’t be resolved from the address, so it can’t load the site.

An here’s the effects in an app. Nope, I’m not looking at refinancing my home. Ads begone!

Summary

For me, Blockada has a number of advantages as it allows me to block ads and other nasty things from known nasty sites. This also means less bandwidth used (especially for video ads) and faster loading times. Additionally, it easily allows me to change my DNS away from whatever ISP I’m connected to a more “secure” and fast one if I want to.  Of course, there are some disadvantages, sometimes it actually blocks sites that you do want to get to, especially where the site link you hit redirects first via an ad site to get to the requested site, but that being said you can easily turn Blockada off temporarily to get there.  Additionally, you don’t see ads, don’t click on them and hence the sites you visit may be missing out on click revenue but as I say I don’t click through much anyway. Well worth a try if you really don’t like flashy, horrible, irrelevant ads “shoved in your face” 🙂

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Blockada ad blocker Android app review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 2, 2019 at 10:00 am.

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Nebo by MyScript makes my iPad feel like my long-lost Newton

I’ve written quite a few articles for various publications in the last 30 years or so. All of them were typed on some sort of keyboard, until this one. I am writing this on my iPad Pro 12.9″ with an Apple Pencil using a software app called Nebo from a company called MyScript.

Twenty years ago, I had a Newton from Apple. It was larger than the iPhone 8 plus I carry now, but the handwriting recognition was quite good. Sure, the first generation text translation made a lot of goofs, but with the second generation, they learned not to only translate from a dictionary. This reduced the incidence of “Egg Freckles” translations to a statical zero.

Now that I have a replacement for that technology, I am eager to see Apple add pencil support to the iPhone! I think as an option, pencil enhanced text input would catapult the handwriting desires of a few into high gear.

Those using digital ink technology today still are hampered with two things: transcribing the ink to an editable format, and then making sure what is deciphered actually is what the original writer meant. You’ll notice above the hand-written text in the screenshots, the text is being translated and spell-checked in real time. This allows the writer to pause and be sure of the spelling, intent, and word choice. Or, after full conversion to text, to edit traditionally with a keyboard.

This section is added using my Mac keyboard as I’m posting the screenshots and text pulled in from Nebo:

The Nebo software is available for $5.99 on the Windows 10 Store, GooglePlay store, as well as the Apple AppStore for iOS. Check the stylus requirements. I know the iOS version requires Apple Pencil, the other two have similar limits. If you have the hardware, though, this thing is a treat!

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Nebo by MyScript makes my iPad feel like my long-lost Newton originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on May 14, 2018 at 9:00 am.

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Exist app knows if tweets, emails or working out makes you happier

Is there an app that can figure out what makes you happy, productive, and active? Hello Code’s Exist for iOS and Android thinks it can. This app gathers data from your Twitter account, email account, local weather, Google Fit, Withings, Fitbit, Instagram, Facebook, and other accounts to draw conclusions about your moods and behaviors.

The app gives you the ability to add any tag that you’d like to your day like sick, headache, vacation, travel, etc. and will then use these tags with the rest of your correlated data to show you trends for your behavior and activities. Some trends might be that you’re more active on Mondays, or that you say you’re happier on days when you don’t receive as many emails, or that you’re sad on days when you send more tweets.

You can also use the app to track habits like flossing, working out, etc and receive a weekly email showing an overview of everything that happened.

The Exist app is free, but the service costs US$6/month with a free 30-day trial so you can get an idea of what types of info it can tell you about yourself before you actually start paying for it.

These days, we all use so many different services, that it’s interesting to see how the data fits together to form the puzzle of your days and weeks.

Grab the free Exist app at Google Play store or iTunes and visit exist.io for more info.

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Exist app knows if tweets, emails or working out makes you happier originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 2, 2018 at 3:08 pm.

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Samsung teams up with The Weather Channel to bring new functionality to weather app

The Weather Channel App for Samsung, which was released in 2016, offers exclusive functionality to users of the soon-to-be-released Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ devices and older devices like the S7, S6 and Note 5. The latest feature to be added to the Weather Channel App for Samsung includes Google calendar event syncing and Lyft ride requests. The Google calendar syncing will link a user’s events with weather forecasts for their selected location to provide the weather forecast for those specific events. Now users can also book a ride to the event using the Lyft app. The Lyft feature is now accessible for app users within the U.S., and The Weather Channel for Samsung App is accessible globally within the Galaxy Apps store.

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Samsung teams up with The Weather Channel to bring new functionality to weather app originally appeared on on April 12, 2017 at 9:51 am.

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