[Security Discussion] unclefab:
You know, the main problem is that as you may have noticed there s not much cooperation going on on those matters.

I made this thread hoping to have many poeple to join and to share their knowledge, and some did, but as you may have noticed too it has been suspiciously ignored by the "experts".

Draw your conclusions, I drew mine...

Another thing is that most people are not interested in that kind of stuff, I already released 3 privacy oriented ROMs and the least I can say is that not many users cared about it, and the few that downloaded the ROMs didn t take 2 minutes to give some feedback, which is usual, most people are willy to take but very few are willy to give anything in return:(...

Now, some answers...

- For the browser, I use Pale Moon (based on mozilla, with the same add-ons, but less permissions).

It s of course fully restricted in Xprivacy And in App Settings (only the internet and the write external storage permissions are alowed).

When I want to browse faster I use Atlas, but you could use Naked Browser, Tint or Lightning, of course fully restricted;).

- For the keyboard, I use a modified version of Sony's Xperia keyboard, you ll find it in the add-ons section of the Una web site, along with explanations about the restrictions you ll have to apply to it.

I quite like that keyboard, it works without connecting anywhere, and it doesn t mind to have everything restricted in Xprivacy except the loadLibrary field.

- To set Xprivacy, look at OP, I have put more a tutorial.

- Silent Phone or Red Phone, I can t tell anything about it since I don t use my phone as a phone (I never call and never text, and the phone functions are disabled so basically I use it as a wifi only device, and reenable data when needed).

But anyway, unless you are involved in illegal or political or borderline activities, does it really matter if your communications are encrypted? Do conversations like "hey Mum, shall I bring some cake sunday" or "sweet heart, you are the prettiest chick I have ever seen in my entire life" need to be encrypted?

I any case, [MENTION=5075064]optimumpro[/MENTION] is ways more qualified than me to explain about encryption since he uses it.

- For pictures I use Quick Pic, once more fully restricted, and it behaves like a good boy. But it doesn t allow passwords to be set, and I don t know about such apps. You mind telling us which apps do allow passwords?

- K9, it s fine.

- File explorer, of course Ghost Commander, two thumbs up to its developper!!!:good:

- Freezing, it works with some apps but for some system apps it doesn t prevent them from running in the background.

If you want to prevent that you have either to uninstall the app, or to chomd it 000 and delete its dalvik dex file and its data located in /data/data.

- Google Voice, it depends if it needs the google framework and the play store services to run, but in any case I personnally don t want that kind of stuff on my phone...

If you want to use a different number than your phone number just get one from one of the various voip services, you ll have to pay a few bucks but it s the price to pay to stay away from google s claws.

- I set lastpass for my wife and it works well.

- I don t kow where you can find a list of safe to remove apps and jars, maybe in the thread for your device?

But the gidelines I gave in OP do work, they have been tested on 5 or 6 different models. Still, they are Samsung 4.1/4.2 specific (on KK it s a bit different), and other OEM add some extra stuff.

Anyway, it s easy to find out by yourself what you can remove, you need a custom recovery and Aroma File manager, and follow what s explained in OP.

- To my opinion the best versions privacy wise are 4.1 and 4.2, and maybe 4.3 to some extend.

I m currenty working on a 4.3 ROM and until now it behaves more or less like 4.2, I could remove as much stuff as in 4.2 (except a jar called voip-common that is not present in 4.2).

- The latest and the greatest' gimmicks are lures mate, unless by latest and greatest you mean latest and greatest spy...

I can t tell about Xposed framework's future, but I m in any case not very confident in the way Android will elvove in future releases.

Fortunately it s possible to do the same than Xprivacy does without having it installed, but it s a bit involved and I won t talk about it further since only people knowing what they do should attempt to do those modifications, plus that such people know what I mean and what I refer to.

- For you s6 edge, I think the best is to sell it and get again a good old 4.3 Note3;)...