CloudAnalyzer

About CloudAnalyzer Android App

CloudAnalyzer

CloudAnalyzer allows users to locally measure their individual cloud usage on their Android device.

About

Developers of smartphone apps increasingly rely on cloud services for ready-made functionalities, e.g., to track app usage, to store data, or to integrate social networks. At the same time, mobile apps have access to various private information, ranging from users’ contact lists to their precise locations. As a result, app deployment models and data flows have become too complex and entangled for users to understand. CloudAnalyzer, a transparency technology, that reveals the cloud usage of smartphone apps and hence provides users with the means to reclaim informational self-determination.

Features

 •  locally observe network traffic (through VPN interface)
 •  link observed traffic to installed applications
 •  show statistics about:
   •  the amount of cloud traffic
   •  the location the traffic flows to
   •  the entanglement of different cloud services (and apps)
 •  help users to evaluate their (cloud) app usage

Requirements

 •  Android 4.4 or later
 •  Granting of a limited set of Android permissions
   •  ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE - for reacting to network changes
   •  BIND_VPN_SERVICE - for setting up the emulated VPN (during runtime)
   •  INTERNET - self-explanatory
   •  RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED - for auto-starting the application
   •  WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE - for data export (optional during runtime)
CloudAnalyzer does not require root permissions and therefore should work on all current Android devices.

Limitations

Cloudanalyzer is not compatible with Android 10+ due to new privacy changes in Android 10 (Restriction on access to /proc/net filesystem, i.e., the functionality that CloudAnalyzer currently relies on to map packages to applications).
Android only supports the use of a single VPN service at the same time. Hence, other VPNs cannot be used at the same time when CloudAnalyzer is running.
Currently, our VPN implementation fails to support IPv6. Besides, we have reports about issues with STUN under certain situations.
The VPN interface operates with the pre-configured IP address 10.0.0.1 and the pre-configured DNS server 8.8.8.8. If necessary, you can adjust these values to your needs.