Hello everyone.
After getting my phone stolen I did a lot of research on the right procedure to prepare an Android for future eventual situations like this one.
I came to the conclusion that it´s better to separate some functions into different accounts. Long story short: one for your data and one for the phone management.
Once the phone is out of reach, one should quickly change the password for the data account, preventing other users to play with it.
However, the phone management account should remain intact so communication with the phone is still possible. This includes un/installing apps, mirroring the actions performed by the phone (calls, SMs, photos...) so you can collect enough data to recover it.
However, the problem comes with this account stating invisible or unremovable by the new user. Any decent thief will delete all the accounts or do a factory reset, de facto dismantling all the data collection strategy.
I have only found one conversation about how to make an account unremovable (on StackOverflow.com) and it was said that it´s not possible unless it´s implemented on firmware level.
I am thinking something along the lines of a "one time wizard" where the original user after flashing the custom ROM enters the data of the account and this can never be changed again (for obvious security reasons) unless re-flashing.
Of course it´s obvious any thief can flash the phone with any other custom ROM but so far I don´t thing they are into that. I would bet they just feel like a Factory Reset is more than enough.
Hence the question:
How difficult would that be to implement?
Cheers,
Jean
PD: This is my first post in these forums. I hope I am using the right one; otherwise someone let me know and point me to the appropriate one.
After getting my phone stolen I did a lot of research on the right procedure to prepare an Android for future eventual situations like this one.
I came to the conclusion that it´s better to separate some functions into different accounts. Long story short: one for your data and one for the phone management.
Once the phone is out of reach, one should quickly change the password for the data account, preventing other users to play with it.
However, the phone management account should remain intact so communication with the phone is still possible. This includes un/installing apps, mirroring the actions performed by the phone (calls, SMs, photos...) so you can collect enough data to recover it.
However, the problem comes with this account stating invisible or unremovable by the new user. Any decent thief will delete all the accounts or do a factory reset, de facto dismantling all the data collection strategy.
I have only found one conversation about how to make an account unremovable (on StackOverflow.com) and it was said that it´s not possible unless it´s implemented on firmware level.
I am thinking something along the lines of a "one time wizard" where the original user after flashing the custom ROM enters the data of the account and this can never be changed again (for obvious security reasons) unless re-flashing.
Of course it´s obvious any thief can flash the phone with any other custom ROM but so far I don´t thing they are into that. I would bet they just feel like a Factory Reset is more than enough.
Hence the question:
How difficult would that be to implement?
Cheers,
Jean
PD: This is my first post in these forums. I hope I am using the right one; otherwise someone let me know and point me to the appropriate one.