IzzyOnDroid

Tracker Control allows users to monitor and control the widespread, ongoing, hidden data collection in mobile apps about user behaviour ('tracking').

To visualise this tracking, a compehensive database of tracker companies from the X-Ray project, developed by Professor Max Van Kleek (University of Oxford) and others, is used to reveal the companies behind tracking to users and to allow users to block tracking selectively.

The app further aims to educate users about their legal rights under current EU Data Protection Law (i.e. GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive).

Under the hood, Tracker Control uses Android’s VPN functionality, to analyse apps’ network communications locally on the Android device. This is accomplished through a local VPN server, through which all network communications are passed, to enable the analysis by Tracker Control. In other words, no external VPN server is used, and hence no network data leaves the user’s device for the purposes of tracker analysis.

Tracker Control provides

• real-time monitoring of app tracking,
• granular blocking of app tracking,
• access to apps’ privacy policy websites without trackers (which they often contain), and
• one-click data requests as granted under EU Data Protection Legislation (to be added soon).

Contrary to similar solutions, this application does not intercept SSL connections, minimising privacy risks and allowing for usage on unrooted Android devices. Only the meta data about network communications is logged, and displayed to the users.