Permissions, privacy, app ops?

[tmcmack]

One of the things I miss most about having root is being able to put on my tinfoil hat and take control over my information with xprivacy. It let me give fake data to apps that didn't need my real info, like spoofing my location so every dang app didn't know where I was all the time. Is there something similar I can do on the Turbo without root?

I found out about App Ops and how it was included and then removed from Android (WTF?). There are many apps that say they can give us access to App Ops on a non-rooted phone, but I've tried several (1, 2, 3, 4), and none work on my Turbo. I've installed them one at a time, and when I run one, I get a message that says "Settings has crashed" and that's it.

Is there any app that can get app ops working on the Turbo, or any similar app so I can restrict my info from other apps?

Edit: Links didn't come through the first time.

 

[AndroidHabit]

Try them one by one again but after install just go to your settings and look for "app ops" instead of launching the specific app itself. "Settings has crashed" is because of that reason.

 

[tmcmack]

I tried three of them again, one at a time. I don't see any app ops related stuff in my settings. I'd imagine that the description in the app store would tell people where to find the new settings, but because there's no info there, I'm probably supposed to use the app shortcut directly.*


Anybody else tried these apps or get any of them working?

 

[doogald]

It's not going to work. Just reading the app descriptions in your links; from the app in your link number 1:

Update: Google has removed all possibilities to start the "App Ops" on non-rooted Android 4.4.2 devices. Until today no backdoor was found to give you easy access to this feature.

From your third one:

Android 4.3 ONLY

From the fourth one:

if you want work on android 4.4.2 ,you device need rooted,

The second one is nebulous, but even that one says, "No more available for android 4.4.2. Google remove AppOpsSummary fragment from whitelist ".

I think it's pretty clear that 4.4.2 and later removed the ability to discretely remove app permissions without root.

 

[korolevbin]

You can do that on Android 4.3 using App Ops.
However, App Ops only denies the access for you (E.g, return a null pointer or empty list to the app.)
In a lot of cases, the apps would crash. (Sometimes I wonder if the app developers are intended to do so)
If you want fake instead of "null", then rooting might be the only choice.

I do not believe that Android M will allow "fake" data, since it will affect the business of advertising network.
Think about the case that there were millions of users posting tweets from a location with Lat 0 and Lon 0...
What a noisy dataset. Ad network will not be happy for this.
"Fake" might have to come from third-parties, which requires rooting.