Phenquestions
Depending on where you live, you may be required to unlock your device when authorities ask you to do so. While you could deny that request, you could end up with a hefty fine and jail time as a consequence.
There may also be situations where you are not asked nicely to hand over the unlock code of your phone, but are pressured to do so.
Privacy Lock is an Android application that allows you to add actions to unlock codes that are executed when they are used.
The free version of the application is limited to one action only. If you configure it, it attempts to send an SMS message to a number that you have added during setup. You could use it to let someone know that you are in danger for example.
While that may be useful, the pro version's functionality offers several additional actions from clearing the call log to wiping the device.
Four additional actions can be configured in the pro version:
- Call log - This clears the call log on the device.
- SMS messages - This removes all SMS messages (but not chat messages in third party applications).
- Media - Deletes all video and image files.
- Wipe - Performs a full device wipe.
You configure actions in the program settings. There you select the desired action, assign an unlock code to it and add additional information if required. If you want to configure the send SMS action for example, you are asked to enter the recipients phone number. This is unfortunately not linked to your address book which means that you have to enter the number manually.
The app ships with a fail-safe that you should configure as well. When you press "9" 15 times and click unlock afterwards, the app emails a new code to unlock the device to a registered email address.
You don't have to configure this but if you forget the main unlock code, it may be your only hope of regaining access to your phone.
Using an application like this could get you in trouble as well if the opposing side finds out about it. Another thing to consider is that disk recovery software may be able to recover some of the information deleted by the application.
Privacy Look is an interesting but niche application as most Android users are probably never going to get into troubles that the app can help with. There is also Android's remote wipe feature to consider which may be a better solution in some situations.
I can see this become a popular cheating application though considering that you can wipe or delete messages, images, videos and call logs from the device using it.
