30 Rock’s Liz Lemon, played by nerd queen Tina Fey, mistakenly left her iPhone in a New York City Taxi Cab. Soon after, the cab driver called Liz’s contacts to relay threats about exposing an “adult photo” showing Lemon’s lemons if she didn’t pay a hefty sum. Android users would be wise to protect their phone data and not end up like Tina Fey’s hard luck character. Here are three tips to safeguard your Android phone and decrease the likelihood of exploitation.
1) Hide files with Astro
Johnny has some unsavory photos on his G1 that he would like to keep away from prying eyes. So does Maria, who took some private photos that she’d rather not have plastered over TMZ if she ever tried out for America Idol. What do Johnny and Maria do? Besides not having compromising material on their phone in the first place, they download Astro from the Android Market.
The Android Pictures app does not display images stored in folders titled with a dot in the beginning. Open Astro and create a folder named “.insertnamehere,” and then mount your phone or mini-SD card on a computer. Transfer private files into the new folder and they will no longer appear in the photo browser. Browsing through Astro or a similar file manager will become the only method of viewing those photos on an Android phone.
2) Set Unlock Pattern
The most obvious means to protect an Android phone is the “Set Unlock pattern” feature. Click “Settings > Security & Location > Set unlock pattern” to map a custom security pattern to keep others out. A patient person may be able to crack your code through trial and error, but this will at least decrease opportunities for friends or family members to mess around with your phone when you’re not looking. The only drawback to this feature is that if an honest person finds a lost phone and wants to give it back, they won’t have access to contacts who can help arrange a return.
3) Wait on BioWallet
Every boy who has ever watched a spy movie wanted their own retina scan machine. BioWallet will bring that iconic dream to the Android in the coming months. BioWallet uses biometric characteristics (eye scan or handwritten signature) to protect documents, conceal folders, store passwords, and even encrypt communications. Its creators promise “military grade security (AES 256 bits)” to protect your information. That’s data security worthy of James Bond, or at least that guy from Burn Notice.
BioWallet preview shots. Visit http://www.biowallet.net for more information
September 13th, 2009 at 3:01 am
I dont knwo i think i have seen this earlier also or been to your blog earlier what ever i liked it a lot. infact i loved it
November 16th, 2009 at 7:03 am
for Number 2 to go along with the silly lock pattern security you can download an app that shows your contact information on the lock screen. i had it a few months ago on a previous android phone. It is called Contact Owner. It was a little buggy but perhaps it has improved. Check it out.
-sun
November 17th, 2009 at 4:44 am
All those methods are fine, but if you want true protection – you have to actually encrypt the files.
Otherwise someone can just pop out the SD card, pop it into their SD card reader on their computer and remove the '.' from all your 'hidden' files.
Currently, only one app does that – MyStash.
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:56 am
I purchased a Droid SmartPhone about a month ago and have been tinkering with the filesystem myself. I’m no stranger to Unix/Linux/Apple OS, so my first thought was to hide my files using a dotted folder. I even added a dotted file named nomedia, as suggested on a Motorola blog. The properties of the folder and files both report Hidden, yet they still appear all over the Droid media apps quite visibly.
Anyone out there with any ideas? I’d appreciate a nudge in the right direction.
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:38 am
I thought I had a solution worked out, however, it un-did itself. When I transferred the files to my .nomedia folder, containing the
.nomedia file, I then had to immediately go to my /sdcard/DCIM/ folder and delete the .thumbnails folder. Then, I restarted the Droid. Finally, the files were not visible in the media apps. Until I opened my file manager, ES File Explorer. Then all of previously hidden files got thumbnailed again and were all visible once again.
Maybe the fault of my file manager, I’m going to test that…
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Yes, it was the fault of ES File Explorer. It managed to access the image viewer in such a way that all of the .hidden images got new thumbnails created for them. So, I had to delete the .thumbnails folder and restart the Droid again. If I don’t do it that way, the Gallery really makes a mess of the suddenly missing .thumbnails files.
Anyway, I used Astro file manager, as suggested above, and the thumbnails were not recreated. Plus, Astro image viewer is really cool. Very visually aesthetic!
So, I guess you can call it a solution. However, I believe that any time I add images, etc, to the .nomedia folder, I will just have to delete .thumbnails, and restart the Droid to actually hide the files from view.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
if you really want to hide stuff gallery/video you can rename the folder to .files " put a . in the front " and also you may need to run the chmod command
busybox chmod 000 .hiddenfolder
the normal chmod command I could not get to work right …
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:22 pm
I use an app called "Image Lock". It encrypts the images with a pin, and puts a picture on it. Easy, it can lock /unlock all of my pics in one button press.