Tip: Stop the Trojans, Stops the Malware !! How to:

Disclaimer: Before you read this. It is already assumed that you have the Geek Knowledge of a lvl64 Geek. If you don't know what you're doing, your phone is not rooted, you are thinking of rooting your phone, and you're asking yourself what rooting is.... Don't root your phone.

There's been a lot of talk all over the interweb about how there have been a lot of no no apps showing up on the Android Market. Google has taken them down, so we are safe there, but you know as well as I, that the Android Market Place is not the only place to download apps.

So what can't we do ? How can we stop these horses of Troy from reporting back to the mother land which porn site I've been surfing ?... Easy! The same way you do it on your computer..... with a firewall.

Take my hand and journey with me as I open your mind and let the flow of knowledge in.

To do this, you will need to root your phone. If you haven't done that yet, you should! Root is linux talk for admin, and you own that phone you're holding, so you should be the admin! There are tons of tutorials on the interweb, you just need to use Google. If you need help using Google, I'm going to ask you to leave now.

Next, we will need to download a Firewall from the market. There is only one that I know of on the Android Market Place, and  it's called DroidWall - Android Firewall. You can clickity click here, or turn on your phone and scan:

Okay! Phone rooted, Check! Droidwall downloaded (and installed), Check!

Aweome!, now we need to set it up. Now when I first used DroidWall, I had it set up as a blacklist. That meant any applications I had checked were "blacklisted" from using the internet. I changed my game plan when word started getting around about the malware and trojans.

If you were to set up a blacklist, you would need to manually go into the firewall and block app that was causing problems (or you'd go and block an app so it couldn't pull any ads from the internet. No access to server = no ads). But what if you haven't been in the firewall in a while and you've forgotten what you've installed since last visit ? You'd have no idea which problems would be the ones causing all the ruckus.

New game plan: Set up a Whitelist !.

When you set up a whitelist, any app you selected will be allowed to use the internet. So when you first set up DroidWall, you will need to go through ALL your apps, and choose the ones you know are GOOD, and you know need access to the internet. When I say good, I mean you know it came from a reliable source.

There are two columns, left side for wifi access, and right side for your data plan. Checking which ever box will allow access to that service.

After you've selected all the apps you want to approve, hit the menu button and hit Apply Rules. That's kind of like saying Save. 

A list of apps I've selected. Make sure the firewall is Enabled, or it will not do any good.

That's it. You'll only need to go through the whole list once.

Now, whenever you install a new application, if you know it is good, and trust where it came from, you can go back into the firewall and grant it access to there internet. If you don't trust the app, and you've installed it anyways, keep it off the whitelist, and it will not be able to access the internet to send out anything.

You don't always have to go into the firewall everytime you install a new app. Some apps don't require access to the interweb. 

You may forget to grant an app access when it is need. Don't worry, you'll remember again when you try and start the app and it doesn't work. It'll come back to you. 

Below is a small list of applications I have approved to access the interweb. It's not a complete list. It's just there so you guys can get a feel of what to grant access to

That's how you keep a strict control over who gets access to the network. One, root the phone. Two, download and install a firewall, and three, create a whitelist, only selecting the apps you know and trust.

Hope you guys found this useful. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Share, +!, or just say hi.

Until next time, Cheers