Cerberus Security App Review

I have been using Cerberus (play store) for around a month now. I have been really impressed with the feature set that this app gives you. I purchased it or $4.95NZ, I though this was a real bargain price.

I purchase high end phones, I am a tech geek after all, and for under $5 to potentially get back my phone if it gets stolen....easy choice. But the other feature that is really important to me is remote lock / wipe. My phone builds up some serious personal information about me, so it is important that I have full control over it.

I am quite interested in security in general. So this app is also a good fit for me, I use keepass to keep my all my passwords safe. I will review keepass later.

The available tools on the tracking site are:

• Start / Stop Tracking - this is based on the GPS position of the phone and is accurate 
• Get device info -IP Address, WiFi network ID that it is connected to, network operator, network subscriber ID
• Get location history - this is pretty awesome, it can be opened directly in Google maps and it shows heaps of data on your phones travels.
• Lock device with code - this is fairly self explanitry, send a unlock code to your phone. As another feature if the code is entered incorrectly you can set it up to take a picture....great if you have a front facing camera, snap a pic of the thief.
• Unlock - remove the unlock code.
• Start an alarm with a message - just what it says, start an alarm....display a message, as rude as you please, it then takes a picture using both cameras....very cool.
• Display a message - this does the same thing as the previous one with no alarm, but it is way funnier because there is a "speak" tick box....I may have got my phone to say rude things. Takes pictures also.
• Get call log - as you would expect.
• Get SMS log - as you would expect.
• Call phone - Calls a phone from your phone, to a number you specify, not sure how useful this feature is.
• Send SMS - send an SMS to a phone number you specify. Not really sure how useful this really is.
• Record Audio - very cool, you specify a time; max 300s; and the phone records audio. You then download it and can listen in on what the thieves are talking about. 
• Take picture - takes a picture, you can choose to use the back camera, the flash and to take the picture immediately. 
• Capture video - as with audio except max 30s
• Grab Screenshot - emails you a screen shot of your phone.
• Start / Stop Emergency Mode - Emergency mode will make the device send its location periodically. You can specify the frequency of the alerts. It allows you to send a SMS also.
• Hide from app draw - this is really useful, hids Cerberus from the app draw. Thieves wont know that it is installed and therefore wont know to do anything about it. You can setup a special number to dial from the phone that will get you into the app.
• Show in app draw - Just makes Cerberus show up again.
• Wipe device memory - I guess it does what it says...didn't try this one though.
• Wipe SD card - I guess it does what it says...didn't try this one though.
• Reboot device - Yep, causes the phone to reboot.

Logging into the https://www.cerberusapp.com/ website is easy, it is really important that this isn't the weak point in your security. This app gives some serious control over your phone. Set a strong password!!!

This app is also one that is greatly improved by having root access on your phone, if you have root you can install Cerberus to the system partition. This means that the app is far harder to remove, normally any app is nuked if you do a factory reset, however a factory reset doesn't reset the system partition. A theif would have to have a much better knowledge of android to remove it. They would need to flash a new ROM.

Security is a concern with a app that has so much access to your phone, but if you have a social media app such as Google+ or Facebook with location services enabled then they have basically the same access as Cerberus does. I have read over their privacy policy and detailed it below. There is nothing particularly menacing about it, but have a quick read if you are interested. And you probably are if you have read this far into a review of a security application for your phone.

Security / Privacy main points from their privacy policy:

• You allow the app to use your location to track the device! To be expected since that is one of the main features.
• You consent to the app sending SMS messages, which means that it could cost you money. But this feature needs to be triggered by the user. Not much of an issue here. Unless someone hacks your account and makes you send really expensive text messages. But I also believe that SMS messages can cost to receive in some places in the world, so this could be more of an issue in that case, it is not relevant in NZ.
• You consent to the app being able to use mobile data, you wont be able to track your phone or do any of the main functions if a data connection is not available.
• As part of this LSDroid, the people that make Cerberus don't accept any liability for charges incurred. This is not a surprise at all.

• The sign up info that the privacy policy details is fairly standard, i.e. your sign up info is kept, and data is transferred to your computer.

• Now on to the interesting stuff, LSDroid says that it does not use your information for marketing purposes which is great, because this app has the potential to locate you down to the best possible accuracy. They do use your info to improve their services and functions, but all developers do this so no big deal there.
• They will email you for "non-marketing or administrative purposes", but from my experience over the last month of using it I haven't had any emails from them.

• LSDroid does release aggregate log information to "interested third parties" which basically means marketing firms. This means that the data they collect on all users is rolled together and general trends and patterns can be determined. It does not mean that any personally identifiable information is released, though a determined data mining effort can usually get far more information then is intended to be released, see this description at Securityfocus.com

• LSDroid states also that they will take all commercially reasonable steps to protect your data, but take no responsibility should there be a breach. Which is not surprising.

• In the event of "MERGER, SALE, OR BANKRUPTCY" as a first course they will try to keep the services running and therefore the users should notice no difference in service or privacy of information policy. If they are merged or sold the information you have provided will be moved to the new owner / merged entity.

SGSIII for a day

My dad decided that it was time to finally step into the smartphone game, his main motivator was to be able to access his spreadsheets on the go. He gets a lot of calls about products, the details of which are all stored in a few spreadsheets.

I'm glad he asked me for advice, because he wanted to be able to read spreadsheets I told him that screen size should be his biggest buying factor. I gave him the choice to get either the Galaxy Note, the SGSIII which he ended up getting and the HTC One X.

Once he picked up his new phone he made a trip down to me to help him get setup and show him a few things that his phone can do.

The apps I installed for him:

• Swype beta....I have posted on this before, awesome. Dad was swyping in less then a minute.
• HandyCalc, probably the best calculator program on Android, much more then he needs but still does the basics well.
• Dropbox already installed just needed an account, this is another thing that he really wanted....not dropbox specifically but the function that it provides, I could have gone with Google Drive / Ubuntu One. But dropbox comes with 48Gb with the SGSIII.
• Torque, I also had a bluetooth OBD2 adapter that I gave him. This one really blew him away, he just had no idea that it was even possible to read the data from the car computer with you phone. He is a mechanic and always thought that you had to get the very expensive proprietary tools, which is true for older models. But you can get all , kinds of data using the adapter and your phone.
• Polaris Office was already installed, this is what he uses to open and read the spreadsheets. It is a fairly good mobile office suite. I didn't really use t much.
• ES File Manager, just so he can browse his files. And it let me put a direct link on his home screen to his most used spreadsheet.
• Google account, so he could access the play store.

I also showed him Ceberus, the phone security suite, which also amazed him the capabilities of phones is really stunning to those who haven't kept up with the state of the tech. I will post with an in depth review later about Ceberus.

It was interesting to help dad and see a different use case to what I'm used to, being a "power user" I shop on specs / modability. His last phone was all txt and call, he has jumped into the smartphone game at the top. The SGSII is one of / arguably the best phone in the world for now. But he didn't buy it because it is the best, but because it has a big screen and his use case requires more stuff to be displayed at once.

Now one geeky thing...is it better then my HTC One S? No, they are both really really polished bits of hardware. The software is not much of a comparison, I am running CM10 Jellybean and the SGSIII is running ICS with touch wiz. I have never been fond of touch wiz, I think it looks far too simple and boring. But I also don't like Sense by HTC as it is too bloated. CM10 is not completely finished but is in a daily driver state, which is what I am using it for. The SGSIII is big though, really big, I wouldn't want to carry it round all the time but it was not as bad as I expected. I wonder what the Note 2 will be like with its 5.5" screen.

Another thing that is interesting is he wants to know more about the tech but has really not kept up with it at all, other people that I deal with who have the same level of knowledge don't want to know anything about the tech they just want a phone that "does internet and email"