Android Lockbox has become an internal program of the company Google that allows the employees of said company to monitor users’ usage of the Android operating system to know if they do use of third-party services and applications.
Therefore, this program allows collect internal information from users to collect sensitive data and in that way to be able to know in what way users interact with popular third-party applications and that therefore can reach affect performance of the Google apps.
All this has made many users wonder how all this works and if they can see each other affected in this situation. That is why here we are going to explain a little more what it is Android Lockbox and what is it for, To do this, follow in detail everything that we will teach you next in the post.
What is Android Lockbox and what is this tool for?
Android Lockbox is in charge of keeping track of the basic statistics of third-party applications, here it evaluates different factors such as the startup frequency and the duration that the user has on it, as well as the use given to them in each country. In this way it can be considered as a service that takes care of collect data on applications used by users of the Android operating system.
Although it should be mentioned that all this is done anonymous form and they are not involved confidential data and individual user accounts. Lockbox is part of google mobile service package and includes default services such as Drive and Gmail. Also, Google often leverages the data from this tool to inform executives about how third-party app services compare.
At the beginning of all this, this type of actions were carried out by the company with the aim of improve own services and thus offer you a better performance to all your users, but currently it is that due to the amount of data they collect they have used it for investigate the competition and in that way know how often Android users use third-party apps.
Android Lockbox is unfair competition?
All this has been generating many concerns and comments from experts, especially after it became known that the Google company used data of this tool to know data on the use of the application of Tik Tok in India, all this originated in the moments when the launch of YouTube Shorts.
And it is that this has not been the only complaint about this type of actions, but it has also been pointed out that Google also supervised the use of email applications that are the competence of Android, as well as the use of applications such as those of Facebook and Instagram. It should be mentioned that all these data are collected by a group of internal workers known as Magic eye.
Who are in charge of reporting everything that happened to executives about how the use of third-party programs compares to Google’s own programs. However, all this problem arises because developers they can only know the information about your applications, while this company had a overview of all apps, so much their own and those of third parties.
In accordance with this, these movements were classified as a anti-competitive practice. Finally, it should be mentioned that the company has recognized all this and in the same way has accepted that it has access to the data of other third-party applications that are developed on its platform. But all this has been defended justifying that it is a public program and what others developers also have access to similar data.
What are the benefits of using Android Lockbox to analyze third-party apps?
All of this has been considered by most developers as a tool that fully benefits Google, and is that this industry would be using Android Lockbox for monitor the use of third-party application available on the Android operating system, what makes it a step above the others. And it is that at the moment of knowing all the statistics that you can collect they allow you make development decisions about each of your applications.
Remember that Android Lockbox is part of a Google’s mobile service package. In this way this application aims to be able to collect information anonymously and with the user’s consent on how you use your applications installed on your mobile. All this data goes directly to Google offices in order to know how is the behavior of third-party apps.
How to disable third-party app analysis of Android Lockbox
End users are in power capacity disable this data collection, for this they must do it during the initial configuration of the device as a way to power improve Android detailing what works and what doesn’t. This means that during the process of configuring the devices of this operating system the user has the possibility to enable and disable this data collection by Google.
Even if not disabled during initial setup can also be done from “Settings”> “Google” In the menu that appears there you must select the option “Use and diagnosis”, from there you can disable data collection. There the user also has the opportunity to view a document of support of Google where It specifies what type of information it is responsible for collecting.
In it you can find the following details:
- The frequency with which each of the applications installed on the mobile.
- Level of the mobile battery.
- Quality and duration of your network connections, as it is WiFi and Bluetooth.