Hi. I recently looked up a word in the urbandictionary.com website - not a naughty word! - but straight after getting onto the website, a second set of pages opened which were full of pornographic material. I found it very difficult to close this and get rid of the offensive stuff, and in the end, wary that the software might have accessed the contacts on my FP1, I decided to reset the phone to default factory settings. I then had to reload all contacts, photos, music etc.
My question - is there a firewall for the FP1 which will stop this happening in the future? I already have it set in settings not to install apps from unknown sources.
The āverify appsā link under security isnāt open to me, and I donāt know how to set myself up as a device administrator.
You can install firewall apps such as DroidWall (Iāve not used it so canāt say how useful it is), there isnāt one built into FP. The AVG free antivirus app has a āsafe web surfingā option which can block undesirable websites which may contain viruses/malware.
Of course you can see if your network provider has an āadultā filter that you can have set on which would block automatically some sites.
There are firewall apps.
Personally Iām using AFWall+ (on F-droid, if you donāt want Gooble play) but this one will generally prevent or allow full access āone app at a timeā (which means that in your scenario, youāll have had allowed the browser to access internet in the first place, so the porn redirection wonāt be prevented)
Iād rather advise for an app that redirects urls by rewriting your local IP table, but at this moment I donāt remember their names. This kind of app comes with a list of offending sites that is scanned each time the system requires an url, and if the required url happens to be in that list, the linking is refused (redirected to 127.0.0.1 in fact).
Iāll come back with an app name if no one else reacts. The concern for me with these apps is that you more or less depend on that list of offending urls, that you didnāt define yourself.
All the above apps require root access to work properly, which is happily the case for our Fairphones
[edit] AdAway performs like the second category I described, and IIRC one can add specific urls and modify the āoffendingā listā¦
One last thing: you have two browsers at least thatāll allow you to block ads and offending sites at their level (not at system level): Firefox (with a relevant extension like Adblock) and the Tint browserā¦
Iām using AFWall+, too (from goolge play, I have no problem with that ;)), but as @Herve5 explained this wont help in your case.
I have checked the Options of my installed Browsers and at Opera Browser I found an option to block Popups. So you can use a Browser with this function to avoid opening Webpages.
If you bring yourself to activate root someday you also should have a look at XPrivacy. This Module will ask you if an App tries to access something. For example if your browser tries to access your contacts. So if you deny this rights a bad page canāt occur much damage.
I use Firefox for Android, with some addons to give me more privacy and un-clutter my browsing of apps.
I also use AdFree, which is another app @Herve5 was probably referring to. Itās not available via GooglePlay store, needs Superuser rights to write to your hostfile, which redirects traffic which is supposed to bring you advertisements to a local target.
I donāt get to see ad-popups, and not much advertisement at all gets through. If I get ads Iām usually quite happy to support the service offered (e.g., as in case of the Leo app).
Fairphone is already rooted by default. Thus you can simply install XPrivacy after installing XPosed-Module (see XDA forum). And I found the XPrivacy exactly what I want, including a Firewall (=just block āinternet accessā of all apps you donāt trust).
Cheers, Robert