Want to Know What Your Android Apps Are Really Doing?

If you have an Android phone, you've probably downloaded a few apps. And when you installed those apps, you were told a bit about what information those apps might access about you, things like your location information, phone number, contact and call lists, and more. That's a good start towards transparency… but wouldn't you also like to know what information your apps are actually accessing, how often, and most importantly what they're doing with it?

Researchers at Intel, Penn State, and Duke have built a tool that can help you learn exactly that. The project, called TaintDroid, is a modified platform for Android phones that allows users to pull back the curtain a bit and see what apps actually do: what data (such as your phone number) they really access and where they send it.

We're excited to see tools like this being built. Like our Facebook quiz, TaintDroid shows how technology can be used to protect privacy and improve user control.

TaintDroid currently requires quite a bit of technical knowledge and effort to install, and may actually void your phone's warranty in the process. So it's clearly not for everyone–at least not yet. (We'd love to see a version of TaintDroid that you could use without hacking your own phone so you could use it to "test drive" apps before you download them!)

So if you're a techie, check it out–you can build and install, play with, and even extend TaintDroid (since it's all open source).

But even if you're not, you should be glad to see projects like this, as they shows how technology can be used to help you control your own personal information. TaintDroid shows us that it's possible to actually monitor what apps do, and once we know it's possible, it's a lot easier to demand that companies build that kind of transparency into the system!

We're planning to ramp up our efforts to promote and support tools like this that help you take control of your own personal information. Keep an eye on the Demand Your dotRights site for more details!