Maybe somebody’s asked this already but how come, in this day and age, there isn’t a way to snapshot your entire phone into some sort of encrypted blob for storage in a location of your choice? You could wipe your phone and setup a throwaway profile with some basic apps before traveling, and then restore the snapshot once safely through customs.
Border issues aside, it would be very handy to be able to snapshot a phone like that anyway…
Seedvault doesn’t backup apps whose developer chooses not to let you back them up. It doesn’t backup the encrypted keystore or the tee. It misses a lot, because Android fundamentally puts developers above users.
There isn’t such a feature on android because they can’t scan your stuff for advertising if it is an encrypted blob. Apple let’s you do this with an iphone, iirc.
Samsung has encrypted profiles, apps have no problem advertising to you from knox.
To do a complete phone backup like that all you need is Android root access. Root access on Android is, in fact, a little iffy. Any app given root access can basically read anything on the phone anywhere, keylog, remote execute, yada yada. The security landscape on android is a lot more flat than ios.
Some ISP Vendors do have apps that let you sync android phones and back them up, it’s just not common and they go through a LOT less work to make sure your restores will work later.
Maybe somebody’s asked this already but how come, in this day and age, there isn’t a way to snapshot your entire phone into some sort of encrypted blob for storage in a location of your choice? You could wipe your phone and setup a throwaway profile with some basic apps before traveling, and then restore the snapshot once safely through customs.
Border issues aside, it would be very handy to be able to snapshot a phone like that anyway…
What you’re talking about is basically an encrypted backup. Seedvault does exactly that, it’s included in many custom ROMs, including GrapheneOS.
Seedvault doesn’t backup apps whose developer chooses not to let you back them up. It doesn’t backup the encrypted keystore or the tee. It misses a lot, because Android fundamentally puts developers above users.
O rly? I will look into this, thanks!
There isn’t such a feature on android because they can’t scan your stuff for advertising if it is an encrypted blob. Apple let’s you do this with an iphone, iirc.
Samsung has encrypted profiles, apps have no problem advertising to you from knox.
To do a complete phone backup like that all you need is Android root access. Root access on Android is, in fact, a little iffy. Any app given root access can basically read anything on the phone anywhere, keylog, remote execute, yada yada. The security landscape on android is a lot more flat than ios.
Some ISP Vendors do have apps that let you sync android phones and back them up, it’s just not common and they go through a LOT less work to make sure your restores will work later.