[HenryBemis]

I installed NoRoot Firewall, it has a "Access Log" tab, that logs all connections (allowed or block). My phone just didn't shut up'. Every other second some app (that wasn't in the foreground) was talking to some IP. My battery was getting slaughtered and my privacy as well.

I proceeded to disable the "Run in background" almost every application, kept only a handful that are really needed (e.g. Signal). Since then my battery lasts for 3 days, and my "Access Log" only moves minimally.

[refurb]

Question - does stopping apps from running in the background actually help privacy?

Can’t the app just buffer all that data (including time stamps) and just send it when you use it again?

Or is the app truly “turned off”?

[wurst_case]

This is how I do it. I cache everything I need to send and send it when I can. I do it in the context if sales information in places with poor connectivity like music festivals.

[aembleton]

The app can't collect and buffer data if it is not running.

[speeq]

Are you sure? I’m currently learning how to develop apps for Android and during my testing I was surprised that you’re able to send silent data-only notifications to devices, even when the app is closed / removed from the drawer. You’re able to run background functions like update a local SQLite database but I haven’t tried making requests to a backend server yet (my guess is it works too) or accessing any sensors.

[damian2000]

You're totally correct, you can do pretty much anything you want in Android running in the background. But the post you replied to is referring to Stopping an app .. via the app info in settings. In this case it stops the background service component until you launch it manually again. Noone apart from power users and developers would do this though.. most people likely don't know what the stop app function does.

There are OS battery optimisations which kick in eventually though, which result in most non system apps to be stopped automatically to save battery. Once again, they won't startup in the background again until being manually launched. This is my general understanding gained from working for a couple of years on an Android app that runs in the background and receives silent notifications.

[HenryBemis]

I don't develop apps for Android, but I do for iOS. I will assume that my operating systems knowledge though is from Windows/Unix. To use Windows terminology, an app is running either as 'manually launcher's or as a service (system launched). Android (at least my Honor phone and any tablet I ever used) gives me the ability to manually intervene and change the auto-launch and the background running. I windows that would be things found (and 'killed') in SysInternals AutoRuns.

I don't leave 'everything on default' in the power/background running settings, and thus I don't give the apps the option to do what the device decidsd. Plus with the firewall I Block all the nasties (e.g. 31.13.x.x - FB, or the various IPs for ads and tracking).

[mrhappyunhappy]

Can anyone recommend a good alternative for iOS to do just this?

[Jerry2]

Just go into Settings and disable "Background App Refresh" for all the apps you don't want running in the background. And also check your Battery section to see which apps use the battery the most.

I'm a recent convert to iOS (I've used Android for 7+ years) and I find that it "phones home" a lot less than Android. You can easily run a Wireshark and confirm it yourself.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/idle-android-ph...

[caprese]

I like how “a lot less” is the new standard, compared to “at all”

[Jerry2]

Well, if you look at the study [0] you can see that you can get rid of the most of the tracking by disabling App Background Refresh, removing the Google apps and by running a content blocker. If you do all those steps, Big Google won't be getting much identifiable data about you.

>Both Android and Chrome send data to Google even in the absence of any user interaction. Our experiments show that a dormant, stationary Android phone (with Chrome active in the background) communicated location information to Google 340 times during a 24-hour period, or at an average of 14 data communications per hour. In fact, location information constituted 35% of all the data samples sent to Google. In contrast, a similar experiment showed that on an iOS Apple device with Safari (where neither Android nor Chrome were used), Google could not collect any appreciable data (location or otherwise) in the absence of a user interaction with the device.

>While using an iOS device, if a user decides to forgo the use of any Google product (i.e. no Android, no Chrome, no Google applications), and visits only non-Google webpages, the number of times data is communicated to Google servers still remains surprisingly high. This communication is driven purely by advertiser/publisher services. The number of times such Google services are called from an iOS device is similar to an Android device. In this experiment, the total magnitude of data communicated to Google servers from an iOS device is found to be approximately half of that from the Android device.

[0] https://digitalcontentnext.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DC...

[Phlarp]

It's a shame google maps is so much better than the alternatives, but it's probably somewhat related to the amount of data they collect.

[sjwright]

But think about that for a second.

Apple spends something like 1 billion dollars a year on Apple Maps. There is no strategic reason for them to do maps. They aren't making money from it. They are anonymising the statistics they gather. They chose to spend this insane amount of money doing something completely foreign to them just so their customers don't have to use Google Maps.

Let that sink in.

It's incredible.

As for the quality of Apple Maps—yes, it was rubbish when it first launched but today it is usually (depending on your city and your specific usages) within cooee of equally good. In fact I tend to find Apple Maps often superior for walking and public transport directions in an unfamiliar city.

[JohnFen]

> It's a shame google maps is so much better than the alternatives

I don't need the best possible mapping application, I just (occasionally) need one that's "good enough". More and more, for me, "good enough" means keeping a static image of the maps of the area that I'll be in.

[rando444]

You can probably find one in the app store just based on reviews.

Pretty much all "no root firewalls" work the same way.. The software pretends to be a VPN client in order to get the network traffic and filter it.

Since you're letting the software have control over all your network traffic, make sure you trust the software manufacturer.

[JohnFen]

> The software pretends to be a VPN client in order to get the network traffic and filter it.

This is why I stick with root firewalls -- I also use a VPN, and I don't think you can have your Android device use more than one VPN at a time (without rooting it).