Mobile: Encrypting All Internet Traffic

This is one of many articles in a series I’m writing to cover end-to-end encryption for everything…

Encrypt All The Things! [A Guide]

you do in your digital life.  I’ll cover encrypting specific types of …internet traffic (like E-Mail, Web sites, etc…) in other articles.

For a primer on encryption, please read my article “Understanding Encryption”…

Understanding Encryption

…as it teaches VERY IMPORTANT concepts that you need to know before moving forward here.

This works for rooted AND unrooted phones.

Big Disclaimer

Before going any further, let’s make one thing perfectly clear on THIS particular encryption.  This does NOT make all your internet traffic encrypted from your phone all the way to the final destination!

So… What does it do then?

This will encrypt your connection from your phone through and past your ISP.  It protects you from your ISP and anyone snooping on  your local end of the network.  This is great for when you need to use public wifi.  Scammers running a free wifi node will NOT be able to see your data NOR will they know where on the internet you’re going.

So… What does it NOT do?

Excellent question!  Let’s say you’re browsing a website that’s NOT encrypted (like this page you’re on right now)… Under normal circumstances, anyone snooping your network traffic ANYWHERE on the internet… from your local connection all the way to the connection on my end at my website, can see:

  • Your IP address.
  • The URL you’re wanting to visit.
  • Anything you type on my search page.
  • The contents of the pages my website sends back to you.
  • In short, everything is visible and in the clear.

Using the techniques in this article, you’ll be on an encrypted connection from your phone, through and past your ISP to some random computer on the TOR network, to a couple MORE computers on the TOR network, till your connection finally exits the TOR network and gets back on the regular internet, possibly in another country.  From THERE, your connection from THAT computer to my website is entirely unencrypted.

So… Why use TOR then?

To hide your network activity from your ISP, your cell phone provider network, your employer’s wifi, your local government(s) (including the NSA and GCHQ (the British NSA)), and anyone else snooping on the network near your end of the connection.  It will also hide your IP address from the websites you’re visiting.  You can make yourself appear to be in just about any country you choose.

Will this guarantee no one can see what I’m doing online?

LOL!  You’re cute when you’re innocent.  Of course not.  NOTHING is 100% safe on the internet, but it’s pretty darn strong protection and causes even the NSA headaches.  Someone with lots of resources would have to be specifically targeting you and it would be very difficult for them, even then.  You’re reasonably safe even against the NSA, but not totally.

What does it encrypt?

Note that this is a method to obfuscate ALL your internet traffic from your Android device, not just web browsing, but everything, including traffic to and from the Google Play Store, Google searches, game communication.  Again, it will NOT encrypt an unencypted connection.  It will encrypt all steps of the connection up to the exit node (see “How does it work?” below).

How does it work?

There are thousands of computers all around the world volunteering to be part of the TOR (The Onion Router) network.  When you connect to the TOR network, you’re randomly choosing an entry node computer somewhere in the world.  That computer then forwards your traffic to another, randomly chosen computer somewhere else in the world, which then forwards you to yet another computer on TOR somewhere else in the world, which then forwards you to a randomly selected TOR “exit node” computer… a computer on TOR whose purpose is to act as a fake YOU to the sites you visit.  It’s THAT computer’s IP address that your sites will see.

All traffic between you and all the TOR computers that your traffic passes through is encrypted.  The TOR computers do not know of your entire connection path through all the TOR computers you’re connecting through.  ONLY your own device knows that.  This is to prevent malicious adversaries from trying to reverse trace where you are.

Doesn’t this slow my connection down?

You betcha!  Yes.  Yes it does.  You do NOT want to do this for a first person shooter game.  YOU WILL LOSE!

Step by step instructions (FINALLY!)

If you’re device is NOT rooted, you’re going to change your Proxy address to “localhost” and your port to 8118 after you download and install Orbot. Below the installation steps are steps on doing that below:

  1. Download the app “Orbot” from the Google Play store.Screenshot_20160404-165041
  2. Optionally, you may want to ALSO install “Orfox”, a browser made to work on the TOR network.  It’s a modified version of the FireFox browser.  It works in tandem with Orbot.  But any browser will work.
    1. Screenshot_20160404-165051
  3. Launch the Orbot app.
    1. Screenshot_20160404-165126
  4. Long press on the screen to start Orbot.
    1. Screenshot_20160404-165118
  5. If you want to appear to be from a specific country, tap the drop down control in the bottom right of the screen and choose your desired country.
    1. Screenshot_20160404-165145
  6. If your device is rooted, skip the following steps about configuring your wifi connection and go directly to step #11.
  7. If your device is NOT rooted, it requires a little more work.  Steps 7-9 will need to be completed every time you connect to TOR.  Go to Settings->Wifi and long press on your wifi connection that you’re connected to and select “Manage network settings”.Screenshot_20160404-165310 BLURRED
  8. Now check the box “Show advanced options”
    1. Screenshot_20160404-165317 BLURRED
  9. Change your Proxy to “Manual”.
    1. Screenshot_20160404-165332 BLURRED
  10. Change your Proxy Host Name to localhost and your Proxy port to 8118 and tap “SAVE”.
    1. Screenshot_20160404-165404 BLURRED
  11. If everything worked (and it doesn’t always), you should have a secure connection on the TOR network now.  Open OrBot and click the “Browser” button on the lower left.Screenshot_20160404-165118
  12. If you have OrFox installed, it should open OrFox and load a page that tests.  It will tell you if you’re on a safe Tor connection.  If you don’t have OrFox installed, it’ll launch your default browser and do the same thing.  Here are 2 screenshots, one of OrFox and one of Chrome:

Screenshot_20160404-165205Screenshot_20160404-165422

If it didn’t work, you’ll see a page like this:

Screenshot_20160404-165246 BLURRED

If you see the “sorry” page, launch Orbot, then open its menu and choose “Exit”, then go to step #3 and try again.  There’s no guarantee that this will work all the time.  Some days it works.  Some days it doesn’t.

image

How to end TOR and go back to NORMAL networking

  1. Open the Orbot app, long press, and Orbot will end the TOR connection.  The onion icon will become gray.
  2. Open the menu in the Orbot app and choose “Exit”.
  3. Fix your wifi proxy back… Settings->Wifi.
  4. Long press your wifi network and choose “Manage network settings.
  5. Click the check box “Show advanced options”.
  6. Change “Proxy” back to “None”.
  7. Tap save.

You should now have a normal network connection again.  As a last resort, simply reboot your device if networking fails to restore to normal.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Hangouts: “photo sharing is not available because of your administrator settings”

If you get the error “photo sharing is not available because of your administrator settings” in Google Hangouts (iPhone, Android, or any other platform) when you’re trying to send a picture (either by taking a photo within hangouts or just selecting an existing picture on your device), here’s what’s up with that and how to fix it…

Why you’re getting this:

You’re probably using an e-mail address that’s NOT @gmail.com.  You’re using Google custom domains (or whoever assigned you your account is using it) or Google domains for business or education.  Your account does NOT have “Google Photos” enabled.

Samsung Galaxy Phones on Amazon.com
Samsung Galaxy Phones on Amazon.com

How to fix it:

If you’re NOT the administrator for the domain, then contact your domain administrator (the person that set up your account) and have them follow the following instructions:

If you ARE an administrator…

  1. Log into your domain control panel and click on “User”.image
  2. Click on the appropriate user account.
  3. Click on “Google Apps enabled”image
  4. Scroll down to “Show more” and click it.
  5. Then click “Additional Google services enabled”
  6. Scroll down and click on “Google Photos”.  It’s probably “off”.  Turn it on.
  7. image

Now the user should immediately be able to send images from within hangouts.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Slow Motion Galaxy S7 Video Tests

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S7 on March 11, 2016 (well, actually TWO of them) and have been testing the features.  Now, this slow motion video is not a new feature.  In fact, I’ve had it on my prior phone, a Samsung Galaxy S4 for almost 3 years, but I’ve had Cyanogenmod installed on it for the the last 2 and a half years, so I’ve been missing this feature.

Details of Slo-Mo

The Galaxy S line of phones since the S4 have had a camera feature where the camera can record video at 240 fps (frames per second) at 1280×720 resolution.

Enough already, let’s see some slo-mo video!

Fine!  Here you go!  This first one is a water bottle connected to a SodaStream, being carbonated.

Next is video of spraying water on the headlight of my car.   I have this uploaded to YouTube, but because of the extreme detail of the thousands of water droplets, YouTube’s video compression really destroys it, so I’m providing it as a downloadable MP4 file instead (46MB).

image

If you want to see the butchered YouTube version, here it is:

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Fitbit is a Major Privacy Peeping Tom

I ran the setup for my new fitbit Surge watch and during the Windows 10 fitbit app setup, it showed me this list of fitbit owners from MY PRIVATE CONTACTS!FitBit Contacts cleaned

In this list of fitbit owners:

  • Dude from High School I barely knew
  • Ex girlfriend from Jr. High.
  • Several people I don’t recognize.
  • Bunch of girls I knew from 1-12 grades.
  • A good friend’s cheating ex.
  • Little sister’s friend.
  • Brother in law.
  • Wife of brother in-law’s good friend (dont’ know why she’s in my contacts… probably through a facebook sync from years ago).

Also, everyone else in my contacts that do not have a fitbit account.

Some of these names are NOT in my contacts on my PC, which means they came from my phone.  And for the Windows 10 app to know that these 16 people have fitbits, my contacts had to have been uploaded to the fitbit servers so it could compare them to its database.  At no time was I asked permission to upload my private contacts (from either my phone nor my PC).  And I’m guessing these people didn’t explicitly grant it permission to let me know they have fitbits and they will likely be notified that I have one, even though I’ve given no such explicit permission to notify them nor any explicit permission to hijack my entire contacts list.

Fitbit spying

In addition to this, 100% of all health data that a fitbit collects is uploaded to the fitbit servers, viewable by fitbit employees… all done without notifying you and certainly without asking for explicit permission.  Turns out, the only way to use a fitbit without uploading all your private data is to not use the PC app or the mobile app, but, of course, the fitbit is mostly useless without them.  There’s no technical reason for uploading our data to the fitbit servers.  The PC and mobile software could easily have communicated with the watch without the involvement of the fitbit servers.

While on technical support today trying to resolve why my fitbit won’t charge, I discovered that they have access to all my health information collected by this watch, even though the employee I spoke with said it “only” uploads… then rattled off every thing the watch does… “for the purpose of knowing your fitbit is working”.  In addition to that, they know when we charge them, when we reboot them, and what devices we charge them from.  All this without permission from us.  Sure, some of this is somewhat inacuous data, but I did not give it permission and collected together, all this information can be used against you.  This is your HEALTH information.

Just about any kind of personal information online can be used against you and your _*personal health*_ information is especially vulnerable.  In this article, I list ways that seemingly innocent information can hurt you:

So, HOW do you stop it?

  1. Don’t run the mobile fitbit app.
  2. Don’t run the desktop fitbit software.

Of course, without the apps, the fitbit is pretty much useless.  Your only real option here is to stop using your fitbit.  There should be other smartwatches that can do similar or better things that DO NOT send all (or any) of your private data to remote servers.

[Update] I sent my fitbit back and got my money back and bought an Android Wear watch that does everything the fitbit does, and more, but without uploading everything to its owners servers.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Encrypt Your Entire Non Boot Disk

This is another entry in my list of articles on encrypting your entire digital life…

Encrypt All The Things! [A Guide]

…from end to end.  Click here for the lead article.  This article is about encrypting your entire NON boot disk on your server, desktop, or laptop computer.  These instructions are DIFFERENT from encrypting your boot disk, which you can find here.  I’ll be giving specific instructions for Windows, but Mac & Linux steps are similar.   These instructions are using free, open source software that’s NOT from Microsoft.

Short (VERY short version)
    1. Install encryption software.
    2. Backup the drive (no, seriously!  DO THIS!)
    3. Select an empty drive letter.
    4. Select device.
    5. Encrypt.

The rest of this shows you the details of those steps.

Let’s begin
  1. Download and Install VeraCrypt fromhttps://veracrypt.codeplex.com/releases/view/616110
  2. Select an available drive letter (your encrypted volume will have this drive letter, NOT the original drive letter).
  3. Click the “Select Device” button and choose your drive to be encrypted.  (3 lines for each drive show up.  Choose the line that contains your drive’s current drive letter).
  4. From the “System” menu, choose “Encrypt System Partition/Drive”.
    1. image
  5. Follow the directions in the software.

DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSPHRASE!!!!!

After that, you’re all done.  Now, every time you reboot, if you want to open your encrypted drive, you’ll need to mount it with VeraCrypt.  SO DON’T YOU DARE FORGET YOUR PASSWORD!  Seriously!  If you forget your passphrase, there’s NO WAY to recover it.  That’s it.  It’s done.  The data on your non boot drive will be gone forever.  You’ll have to reformat your drive and start all over OR pull out the drive and set it aside, hoping you’ll remember your passphrase some day.  I cannot stress this enough.  You CANNOT forget your passphrase!  I recommend storing a HINT of your passphrase in an ENCRYPTED password management tool, like LastPass.  I use the “secure notes” feature to store mine.

Your drive is now much more secure.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Quicken 2016 Riddled with bugs and Errors

I’ve been writing about the bugs in Quicken for years and I’ve been complaining to Inuit about it.  For many of the bugs, they refuse to acknowledge they exist.  For others they simply don’t care.  Don’t expect any of these to be fixed… ever.

Here’s a short list of bugs and problems I’ve experienced with Quicken 2016 in just the first couple of days of use:

  1. Linking bills to online crashes 100% of the time on first attempt of each bill.
  2. App hangs with high CPU% when trying to update online transactions frequently (not all the time).  Must forcibly kill app.
    • image
    • image
  3. I canceled a repeating online payment.  It will never send the instruction and complains that I have a pending instruction to send every time I exit the app (pictured).
  4. No audio (happened before the upgrade and still no sound).
  5. Every time you contact support, they claim your file is corrupt and want you to do a file repair, which never fixes the problem, though that, itself, is both a customer service problem and a serious bug that their software continuously corrupts the data file.  This has been a problem for at least a decade (possibly more).
  6. Redraw routines are incredibly inefficient with too many redraws happening — readily apparent and an actual problem when remoting in to your PC.  Also a problem when moving the app window around the desktop.  It’s very choppy even on high end desktops with high end graphics cards.   This is something a 20 year old PC should handle easily.
  7. Non standard text entries — When you click in it, it auto-selects the text.  This has been a problem for decades.  They seem to think it’s a feature, but to power Windows users, it ALWAYS interferes with our way of doing things.  It’s impossible to get used to it because 99% of all other apps do it right (by not doing this).
  8. [Update 2016-02-16] I changed a password to a credit card, now Quicken can’t connect and asks for the pw every time, instead of storing it in Quicken’s password locker with all the others.

image

Thank you for sharing this article.  See the image below?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Is BitCoin Legitimate?

(Image credit coindesk.com)

It’s time to correct some misunderstandings about BitCoin.

I was interested in BitCoin and read about it, but one can only learn so much without actual experience, so I dove in and bought some BitCoin, did some mining, gave some BitCoin to my kids, and bought and sold BitCoin over the last year.

What I learned

  1. It’s absolutely, positively not a pyramid scheme. I know pyramid schemes. Pyramid schemes were a friend of mine, and you, BitCoin, are no pyramid scheme.
  2. BitCoin is not centrally located, is user supported, and cannot be shutdown by this or any other government, similar to Tor or bittorrent.
  3. It’s draw is that it is NOT controlled by a central authority like a government or Google.
  4. Everything costs money. Transactions have to be processed and that costs money, but BitCoin transactions are crazy cheap.
  5. 100% of every BitCoin transaction that’s ever taken place has been tracked and is a permanent part of the BitCoin block chain.
  6. Just as cash is not taxed, neither is BitCoin. But BitCoin purchases are no different than cash purchases. They are taxed unless the buyer and the seller agree to not report the transaction. But, the buyer usually has a tax incentive to report the purchase for income tax reasons. Same as cash.
  7. BitCoin is not a tax free paradise.
  8. BitCoin is not an illegal transaction paradise. Cash has no circulation ledger history. BitCoin has a complete and total transaction ledger and history.
  9. Illegal transactions happen in all markets, in all countries, in all currencies, including BitCoin, but only BitCoin has a complete and total history of every single transaction.

Responding to claims that it’s a pyramid scheme, anonymous, you don’t know who promotes it  nor how much BitCoin they have, and that BitCoin has no value, and that only scammers, drug dealers, and hackers use it…

A pyramid scheme works with or without anonymity. As such, anonymity is not a requirement for a pyramid scheme.
A pyramid scheme is when a smaller number of people at the top of the  scheme make money only as larger numbers of newer recruits pay in. Drawing this relationship and hierarchy on paper looks like a triangle, hence the term “pyramid”.  And since the only way people get paid in a pyramid scheme is by larger numbers of recruits, mathematically, that scheme is doomed to failure because after only a couple dozen recruit layers pass, the new numbers needed to keep it going become larger than the human population. That is not BitCoin.

A single BitCoin is an answer to an extremely complicated mathematical formula that takes an ordinary home PC more than a year to compute at full CPU speed. As such, they cannot be counterfeited.

There will only ever be 22 million BitCoins in existence. Their value is on their limited numbers and work involved to be mined.

Promoters of BitCoin are not anonymous. The creator is, but that has no bearing on the existing, known community that supports it. Coinbase, CoinDesk, etc are not anonymous entities.

Everyone that buys BitCoin usually buys it from a known entity, such as the ones I listed above. But what’s cool about BitCoin, is that you CAN buy BitCoin from some anonymous entity SAFELY. That’s the beauty of it. The worldwide BitCoin network validates the BitCoin you’re purchasing is valid, has not been already spent, and that it has successfully been transferred into your wallet. You can safely buy BitCoin in a back alley, with cash, in a foreign land, at night, while naked, if you prefer. 🙂

No one needs to know how much BitCoin the person or entity you’re transacting with has. But, if you want to know, that’s public knowledge too. It’s all in the public, permanent BlockChain. All you need to know is their wallet address. You see 100% of every transaction on that wallet. And to do any transaction, you do need to know that wallet address. So it’s all out in the open.

BitCoin, like fiat currency has no intrinsic value. Both currencies have value in them as their users see fit. Since BitCoin sells for real money by real people in a real society, by definition, society has indeed placed a value on BitCoin. At the moment, that’s $402.38.

Scammers, drug dealers and hackers are and have been using cash too. That has no bearing on the fact that we can and do legitimately use cash, just as we legitimately use BitCoin.

The EU court, just the other day, officially ruled BitCoin as a currency. Big credit cards are getting into it. More and more major retailers are accepting it like Amazon gift cards and http://overstock.com.

What can I buy with BitCoin?

It’s real, has value, is safe, is 100% recorded in the BlockChain.
I hope this has provided you with useful information.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Error: “Interface name is not valid at this point”

If you ever get the Visual Studio error:  “Interface name is not valid at this point”, it’s a simple fix.  You have a simple typo.  See the example here:

InterfaceNameIsNotValidAtThisPoint

container.RegisterType<IUser, User);

Notice the closing parenthesis?  There’s no open parenthesis.  Notice the open angled bracket?  There’s no closing angled bracket.
Once you see that, the fix is obvious:  Replace the “)” with “>()”.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

CSRSS.EXE is NOT a Trojan–Windows help phone scam!

Help me impede the scammers!

image

Quick Disclaimer:  Yes, there IS a virus or trojan that uses the name csrss.exe, BUT……….

There’s a phone scam going on where someone from India calls you up from out of the blue, claiming to be from Microsoft support, responding to your computer problem (which you may or may have not put in a request for help… usually not), then scamming you to give them control of your PC, where they trick you into buying fake warranties for many hundreds of dollars, while also stealing your financial information and all your passwords.  They’ll give you tons of fake evidence that your computer is infected with trojans and viruses.

Part of their success lies in the fact that while they have remote control of your PC (that you were tricked into giving them), they’ll use your PC to Google for csrss.exe then the first link in the search results claims that it is a trojan virus.  IT IS NOT!  csrss.exe is a core part of Windows.  However, it’s likely true that some trojans disguise themselves as csrss.exe.  BUT, 100% of all Windows PCs have a LEGITIMATE file called csrss.exe.  If you have the file, AND YOU DO (if you’re running Windows)!, it does not mean you have a virus or a trojan.  You absolutely have to have this file or your system will not function.

What can you do to help me impede the scammers?

This may sound self serving, admittedly, but I need you to search for csrss.exe on Google and NOT click anything except a link to this page, right here.  That will push this page up in the Google rankings.  Why?  Because when the scammers are pulling up the csrss.exe search in Google on their next victim’s PC, hopefully the victims will see THIS search result and put a stop to the scam.

If it makes you feel better, I’ll even refrain from putting any advertisements in this article.  It’s more important that we stop the scammers than I make a couple cents over a year or so (and yes, if I had an ad on this page, I’d only be getting a few pennies PER YEAR, if anything at all!)

Also, please share this article in whatever form you can to spread the word about the scam and to encourage others to do the same with the search rankings.

Have you received a similar call from these people?

Let us know in the comments.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Reasons To Root Your Android Device

image

I frequently see posts where people are asking for the benefits of rooting an Android phone or tablet.  So, instead of rethinking and rewriting the list every time, I’m just going to link them to this pre-existing list.

The List

    1. Get rid of bloatware.
    2. Increase security & privacy.
    3. Integrate Google Voice into the OS (depends on which firmware “ROM” you get).
    4. XPosed with tons of modules for enhanced capabilities.
    5. FolderMount to move ANY app to SD (better than app2SD)… ALWAYS works!
    6. Become a wifi hotspot without paying your carrier DOUBLE for the same internet.
    7. Share internet via cable without paying your carrier DOUBLE for the same internet.
    8. Granular (per permission, per app) security for all apps.
    9. Increased storage space due to removed bloatware.
    10. Backing up all apps.
    11. Keeping multiple versions of backed up apps (Titanium Backup) so you can roll back to an older version when an update totally hoses needed functionality or adds in app advertisements.
    12. Block phone calls and texts from specific numbers (at the OS level).
    13. NANDROID backups (entire, bit-for-bit copy of your entire setup).

All the items above, explained

    1. Get rid of bloatware.
      1. Bloatware is software pre-installed by the manufacturer and carrier that you are not allowed to uninstall.  It’s usually crap that you’ll never use and uses up your valuable storage space that you could be using for your own stuff.
    2. Increase security & privacy.
      1. Contrary to popular opinion, rooting your phone does not automatically reduce your security.  In fact, you can add powerful security control that you will never have with an unrooted deviced.
    3. Integrate Google Voice into the OS (depends on which firmware “ROM” you get).
      1. I don’t keep up with every feature of every alternative firmware (also, mistakenly called “ROMs”), but I do know that Cyanogenmod has Google Voice support integrated into the OS (they call it “Voice+”).  If you have an expensive texting plan, you can cancel it and use your free Google Voice # for texting.  The unrooted downside is you can only use Google Hangouts or the old Google Voice app to send or receive texts.  If you want to use another texting app, like Chomp, Textra, or any of the others, you’re S.O.L.  But with Cyanogenmod, you can connect Voice+ (a feature in the OS settings) to your Google Voice account and suddenly all texting apps can send and receive texts with Google Voice.
    4. XPosed with tons of modules for enhanced capabilities.
      1. XPosed is an app for rooted Android devices and it has many “modules” that you can download for great features like giving you the ability to disable any permission you want from any app.  So if a game wants your contacts, you can block it.  That’s just one of hundreds of things you can do with XPosed.
    5. FolderMount to move ANY app to SD (better than app2SD)… ALWAYS works!
      1. FolderMount is not a feature, a concept, or an OS Setting.  It’s simply an app available in the PlayStore that let’s you move an apps program folder and/or data folder to your larger SD storage (internal or external) and it tricks the app into thinking it’s still in the original location, so the app continues to work.  All other apps that move apps to SD cards fail with some apps because they don’t trick the apps into thinking they’re still in their original location.
      2. Moving your apps to SD frees up your internal storage for more apps so you don’t have to pick and choose which apps to uninstall when you want to install a new one because you’re just out of space.
    6. Become a wifi hotspot without paying your carrier DOUBLE for the same internet.
      1. Many phones have this feature disabled by the carriers because they don’t want you having this ability.  Other carriers provide their own version of this on your phone, but when you use it, it notifies the carrier that you’re doing it and the carrier charges you extra money.  It’s really none of their damned business.  You’re already paying for the internet access and the bandwidth.  With a rooted phone, you can turn your phone into a wifi hotspot and it won’t freaking send a pointless message back to the carrier to say, HEY!  This user is using what he’s already paid for!  Let’s double-charge him!
    7. Share internet via cable without paying your carrier DOUBLE for the same internet.
      1. Similar to making your phone a wifi hotspot, you can plug a cable between your phone and a laptop or PC and let it connect to the internet through your phone.
    8. Granular (per permission, per app) security for all apps.
      1. Every app you install has a FIXED set of permissions.  When you install the app, you’re presented with the list.  You can either accept ALL those permission or NONE of them (by not installing the app).  With a rooted phone, you can install an app, then go and turn OFF individual permissions you don’t want the app to have.  (This increases your security and privacy by light years!)
    9. Increased storage space due to removed bloatware.
      1. This one is self-explanatory.
    10. Backing up all apps.
      1. You can back up your installed apps and their data, then restore them later.  This is ridiculously useful.
    11. Keeping multiple versions of backed up apps.
      1. (Titanium Backup) so you can roll back to an older version when an update totally hoses needed functionality or adds in app advertisements.  So, so, so, sooooooooo useful!
    12. Block phone calls and texts from specific numbers (at the OS level).
      1. Got one too many calls from “Rachel, from ‘Card Services’?”  Add the incoming phone number to your block list.  This is NOT an app.  It’s a feature of the OS (depending on whether you install a firmware that has it).  The phone never rings or wakes up… it’s just totally blocked and ignored.
    13. NANDROID backups (entire, bit-for-bit copy of your entire setup).
      1. You can make an exact copy of your phone, as-is.  Then restore it later, EXACTLY is it is at the moment you make your backup.  This is good for many things, including making a backup before you start experimenting with changes.  Screw it up?  Just restore from your backup.

Can you think of any other benefits of rooting your Android device?  Share them with us in the comments below.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.