PanicKit 1.0: built-in panic button and full app wipes

Panic Kit is 1.0! After over three years of use, it is time to call this stable and ready for widespread use. Built-in panic button This round of work includes a new prototype for embedding PanicKit directly into Android. Android 9.0 Pie introduced a new “lockdown” mode which follows some of the patterns laid out by PanicKit. [Read More]

PanicKit: making your whole phone respond to a panic button

Our mobile devices do so many things for us, making it easy to communicate with people in all manners while giving us access to all sorts of information wherever we are. But in times of anxiety and panic, it is difficult to quickly use them. Will you be too shaky to type in your PIN or lock pattern? Will you have enough time to find your trusted contacts and send them a message? [Read More]

Experimental app to improve privacy in location sharing

As part of the T2 Panic effort, I’ve recently been diving deep into the issues of sharing location. It is unfortunately looking really bad, with many services, including Google, frequently sharing location as plain text over the network. I’ve started to write up some of the issues on this blog. As part of this, I’ve put together an experimental Android app that aims to act as a privacy filter for all ways of sharing location. [Read More]

Sharing your location privately

Facebook location sharing embeds the location in every single message, providing a detailed log to the recipient, Facebook, and anyone Facebook shares that data with One handy feature that many smartphones give us is the ability to easily share our exact position with other people. You can see this feature in a lot of apps. Google Maps lets you click “Share” and send a URL via any method you have available. [Read More]