Out of frustration with all the bloatware on my new GN2014 and the inability to disable most of them, particularly Flipboard which I personally dislike, I decided to do something about it.
A forum search reveals people who want to block certain apps from accessing the internet for certain reasons but their device isn't rooted. Here's your answer.
On Google Play, the app 'NoRoot Firewall' (Free) does the trick, if only to show you which apps try to access the internet. I installed it to check it out. It puts up a notification each time an app tries to access the Internet and when you tap the notification, it takes you to a screen where you can allow or block internet access by it.
Of course, you should allow access for email and Google Play and other obvious ones. When 'My Magazine' aka Flipboard came up - BLOCK. A satisfied feeling resulted.
No doubt there will be a few surprises like 'Cleanmaster'. Why exactly does a cleaning app need direct internet access? Oh, ads I suspect - BLOCKED. I'll be uninstalling that one anyway. It keeps warning me about low memory.
If you only want to block ads then AdBlock Plus does that anyway. You won't find that on Google Play but on the Adblock website. I personally don't block ads. To each his own.
I doubt I'll keep the NoRoot Firewall app around for long, but it'll be fun to happily block all kinds of things to see what happens. You also get a nice detailed log of the apps and the IP's and ports where they 'phone home'. Very handy for techies who can use the info for more targetted blocking.
I hope you don't mind me posting titbits like this in here. Of course, this one applies to any device, Rooted or not.
Regard
tamxir
A forum search reveals people who want to block certain apps from accessing the internet for certain reasons but their device isn't rooted. Here's your answer.
On Google Play, the app 'NoRoot Firewall' (Free) does the trick, if only to show you which apps try to access the internet. I installed it to check it out. It puts up a notification each time an app tries to access the Internet and when you tap the notification, it takes you to a screen where you can allow or block internet access by it.
Of course, you should allow access for email and Google Play and other obvious ones. When 'My Magazine' aka Flipboard came up - BLOCK. A satisfied feeling resulted.
No doubt there will be a few surprises like 'Cleanmaster'. Why exactly does a cleaning app need direct internet access? Oh, ads I suspect - BLOCKED. I'll be uninstalling that one anyway. It keeps warning me about low memory.If you only want to block ads then AdBlock Plus does that anyway. You won't find that on Google Play but on the Adblock website. I personally don't block ads. To each his own.
I doubt I'll keep the NoRoot Firewall app around for long, but it'll be fun to happily block all kinds of things to see what happens.
You also get a nice detailed log of the apps and the IP's and ports where they 'phone home'. Very handy for techies who can use the info for more targetted blocking.I hope you don't mind me posting titbits like this in here. Of course, this one applies to any device, Rooted or not.
Regard
tamxir
