protect your privacy with this app on your phone

Privacy can sometimes create barriers to the day-to-day use of your phone, which is also the case with app permissions. Even after the improvements in Android 11, you still have to choose from a fixed selection of permissions. Bouncer solves this by offering options for personalizing the permissions.

bouncer

As of Android 11, when giving app permissions, such as your location or files, you can choose from five options, namely: “While using the app”, “Only this time”, “Always Allow”, “Always ask ” or “Decline”. Although the fine-grainedness of the permissions has been improved, it remains impossible to indicate, for example, that the permission must work for at least 1 hour. For phones that not yet running on Android 11, there are more limitations: it is not possible for them to make such a fine-grained selection.

Whether you’re running Android 10 or Android 11, Bouncer can always come in handy. Fortunately, Bouncer is also very easy to use: after installing the app from the Play Store, you only have to give permission for accessibility functions. Bouncer does not request any other permissions, nor does it require any other data to work. According to the developer, the app cannot connect to the internet, making it impossible to send data – if it collects it at all – to the developers’ servers.

Avert permissions

After the app has been set up, you basically no longer need to touch the application. As soon as apps are asked for permission for, for example, your location, the regular screen with which you can give permissions will appear. Only once you have granted permission, the main function of Bouncer will appear. A notification will ask whether you would like to allow the permission after closing the app, or whether you should deny access to it for the specific app.

A third option you get is the ability to schedule the end of the authorization period. For example, are you going to travel for one hour and do you want an app to only have access to your location during that time? Then you can indicate via Bouncer that the permission should only be withdrawn after that time.

In this way it can be prevented that slumber applications, the apps that you only use a few times a year, keep access to privacy-sensitive permissions for months. In Android 11, permissions are revoked after a few months, but until then apps will keep their access to the given permission – in Android 10 such a permission reset does not take place. Depending on which authorization it concerns, applications can therefore continue to collect data unnoticed in the meantime.

Install bouncer

Bouncer currently costs 1.99 euros in the Google Play Store. Are you planning to try the app, or do you think the app offers too few features for its price? Be sure to let us know in the comments at the bottom of the article.