Ad blocker shootout: AdAway vs. AdFree

Ads and the hosts file

Android is a product from Google that you, the customer, get for free. Right? Wrong! YOU are the product, and Android is the market where Google sells you to its advertisers. Same goes for the "free" apps on the Android Market that sell your data, screen space, and privacy to their advertisers.

You can block most ads from any program on your PC by adding the ad servers to your Windows hosts file. By doing so, requests for ads are sent to a server without any ads: your own computer is the server, and it won't send ads to itself.

The same trick works on Android too. It has a hosts file just like Windows, and if you add the URLs of the banner farms you can redirect them to an empty box of ads instead of to their own ad-infested server. The Android hosts file sits in your internal phone memory in /system/etc/hosts. The hosts file is a plain text file without an extension.

When you block an advertiser in your hosts file all its ads are blocked. They won't appear in any web browser, they won't appear in any app, they won't even appear on this website. They won't set tracking cookies either, so you can use your apps and surf the web without a bunch of advertisers spying on you.

Blocking ads by manually tweaking your hosts file is a tedious job. But there's no need to do it by hand, because (cliché alert) there's an app for that.

Apps against ads

AdFree is as famous on Android as AdBlock is for Firefox. It's a very simple app that downloads the addresses of a large number of advertising servers, and writes 'em to your hosts file together with a pointer to the IP address 127.0.0.1. This is the loopback address of your own phone, so any request for ads is effectively thrown away.

AdAway uses the same trick, but it combines three servers (hosts-file.net, pgl.yoyo.org, winhelp2002.mvps.org) out of the box. You don't have to use all three. Even better: AdAway lets you add your own hosts file sources. You can add your own addresses to a blacklist in case the default lists don't include them. It also has a whitelist, just in case you want to let some ads pass through to support the developer of your favourite app, or because you run an app that breaks if it can't connect to its sponsor. If you want to tweak things even more, you can redirect URLs to any server of your choice.

AdFree is closed source, AdAway is open source. Both require root access to edit your hosts file. When I switched from Symbian to Android I used AdFree, but I moved to AdAway because it can do a lot more.

For obvious reasons both apps don't display ads ;)

• AdAway (alternative download links, no longer in Play Store)
• AdAway (Google code)
• AdFree (alternative download links, no longer in Play Store)
• AdFree (BigTinCan)

Skype adds ads, landscape, more video

New: video in landscape mode, ads

Skype 2.5 for Android is out. The update adds video calling for more phones. You're no longer stuck to videos in portrait mode, because now it does video in landscape orientation too. But before you rush out to grab the latest edition you better make a backup of your old copy. Skype is the living evidence that newer is not always better.

The ability to tilt your video comes at a price, because Skype has added advertisements. The ads show up if you're in the USA, UK, and Germany. Other countries will get them later. You won't see the ads if you have Skype credit or any other paid service active, so keeping a balance of a few pennies may be worth it, even if you only use the free features of Skype.

Old: tabs, silence, passwords

Even without the ads, you might want to keep an old version if you don't care about video calling. The last version with tabs is 1.0.0.983. Since then, switching between contacts, chats, and calls requires a trip back to the main screen. The annoying startup and signoff sounds can't be switched off in the new versions, and the dial pad beeps won't go away either. It also forgets your password when you sign out. The old versions remembered it. Could the low rating on the Android Market have anything to do with the terrible user interface? With a quarter million ratings, an average of just three stars and a half for an app like Skype means something must be wrong.

If you really need video calling (it gets old real quick) use a recent version of Skype. If you're only in it for the calls and chats, use an old version. Tip: you can also chat on Skype with multi-network instant messenger imo.

• Skype (Android Market)
• skype.com
• Skype 1.0.0.983 (Google)

Skype competitors:

• Vonage
• Viber
• CSipSimple

Superbug in Superuser 3.0

Superbug

If you've rooted your phone, you'll have Superuser installed on it.

Superuser is an app that grants Android apps root permissions. Rooted phones can't live without it, because you need a way to control which apps can have root privileges and which apps cannot. Without such a gatekeeper any app would have root access on a rooted phone, which would create more security problems than Microsoft and Adobe combined.

Today the Android Market sports a brand new edition of Superuser, version 3.0. If you update to the latest version you may run into supertrouble. Fat chance that the updated Superuser won't launch at all, or it will force close when you try to open it. Possible reasons: your old copy of Superuser was signed with the wrong key, or it can't write data to your system partition.

Bugspray

If you're lucky you can repair Superuser by going to the Android application settings menu (settings/applications/manage applications) and clear all Superuser data. You'll need to set root permissions for your apps again when you clear the Superuser data, but you'll probably have to do that anyway because the update is likely to ignore your old settings.

But sometimes even clearing the data doesn't help. If that happens you should give SU Update Fixer a shot. This is a sort of bugspray made by the developer of Superuser. It's meant to fix glitches when you update from a third party Superuser version (from custom ROMs and apps to root your phone) to the official Android Market version.

If that doesn't work you should revert to your old Superuser version. Of course you'll need a backup copy for that, so make sure to back up your old Superuser app with Titanium, MyBackup, your file manager, or whatever method you use to create backup copies of your apps. You'll probably need the apk installer file to reinstall your old version of Superuser, because without a working version running your backup and restore app is not gonna get the root permission that it needs to do its job.

Antivirus apps like AVG will probably flash a false positive at you. The solution is simple: just ignore the false alarm.

• Superuser at androidsu.com
• SU Update Fixer at androidsu.com
• Superuser (Android Market)
• SU Update Fixer (Android Market)

Market scam: avoid Camera Pro by Mobile Whiz LLD

Free market: pros and cons

Unlike the Apple app store, the Android Market is a free market. Anyone can publish anything without prior censorship.

This freedom is good, but it comes at a price. A free market is more vulnerable to abuse than a closed shop in a gated community. Remember all those apps that ask money for free maps from OpenStreetMap? Or the apps that slap ads on books with expired copyrights, and then receive a daily update as if the writer wrote a final chapter after being dead and buried? You've probably seen that endless stream of vibrator apps too. Same app under a dozen different names, and they get a daily fake update to spam their way to the top of the "just in" section of the market.

Market failure

Another app that abuses the liberties of the free Android Market is Camera Pro by Mobile Whiz LLD.

The offer looks too good to be true. Camera Pro promises thousands of filters and lenses for your phone camera, says it's incredibly fast, and more.

It also claims raving reviews in its market description: "Coolest camera app around! 5 stars! What more could you ask for?"

These reviews are totally fake. Camera Pro put these endorsements on their market page before anyone bothered to leave a real comment. Not that the comments section is of any help, because those comments faked by the developer too.

I saw this app on the market a couple of days ago. I tried it, found that it was not an app but just a frontend for a web site, and it didn't even work. So I left a one star rating and a matching comment. I was the first one to comment, and the first to hand out a star. I had to give it that one lone star because the Android Market won't let you award zero stars, and if you don't give stars you're not allowed to leave a comment.

The next day I saw this app again in the "just in" section of the market. To my surprise my rating and comment were gone, and so were all the other comments that told the truth about the app. Instead, there were three wildly enthousiastic comments and three five star ratings. A low and equal number of ratings and comments usually means that the developer downloaded his own app a few times to write fake comments and cheat the rating system.

When the app got downloaded by others the ratings went downhill and the comments started to reflect the true nature of the app: crapware, and possibly malicious too.

And then it reappeared as if it was brand new. When I looked it has one comment. It's positive beyond reality, so I suspect foul play by the app coder. It had two ratings: a 5* rating from its maker and a 1* rating from a real user.

You can't erase negative comments and low star ratings from an existing app. But you can pull your listing off the market, and then upload the same crap again as if it was a new app. Added three times, twice removed. The same old version of Camera Pro will probably be pulled out and reuploaded tomorrow. And then again and again. How long can Mobile Whiz LLD get away with this before Google kills their market account?

September 26, 2011 update: Indeed, Camera Pro reappeared. Mobile Whiz LLC pulled the "remove and reupload" trick yet again to censor out the real ratings and comments, which tell a truth that the fake ratings try to hide.

Circumventing the rating and comment system is not the only reason why you should stay away from this app. Another reason is that the app doesn't work as advertised. I doubt that it works at all. And there's more:

Malware alert

When you install Camera Pro it demands a long list of permissions. Dangerous permissions. Permissions that can be abused to grab every email address out of your address book and sell 'em to the spambots.

Camera Pro is a photo editing app. But it also wants the flawed "phone state and identity" permission (which means it can read your phone number and IMEI), all your contact data, and access to your SMSs and MMSs. Needless to say, it asks for full internet access too, so it can grab all your private info and send it to who-knows-where.

Wait, that's not all. It wants permission to start all by itself at boot too. Even if you don't launch the app it can do so by itself for no obvious reason. Why would a photo editor need to start automatically when you switch on your phone? Can't it wait until you have a picture to edit?

For all practical purposes Camera Pro should be labeled "malware" until the developer learns about business ethics. My advice: stay away from this app!

September 29, 2011 update: Camera Pro by Mobile Whiz LLC is gone from the Android Market.