Periodically I’ll be doing an ad-hoc deploy of MVPS HOSTS file on a Mac or Android system, and have to improvise a means to accomplish the required conversion from DOS to Unix line termination from the shell prompt.
Mobile Security
Securing mobile devices.
How To Deploy MVPS HOSTS File on an Android Phone
I have replaced the default HOSTS file on my Android device with the MVPS HOSTS file, a blacklist for blocking advertising, tracking and malware-distributing server names. Installing this blacklist confers the same browsing security, privacy, and performance benefits on my phone as I have long enjoyed on conventional workstations: ad blocking, faster web page loads and decreased bandwidth usage, mitigation of browsing behavior profiling and contextual ad targeting, and reduced exposure to malware infection by malicious web sites. Allow me to demonstrate the specific procedure that I used and hopefully save others some time.
Android Device Manager Does Not Work in Internet Explorer
[Edit: As of July 11th it looks like this has been fixed. Android Device Manager is working in Internet Explorer 11 again in my testing. Original discussion follows.]
Last night I flashed my phone up to CyanogenMod 11 M8, and since then I’ve been putting things back the way they were and testing everything out. A few bugs were fixed from the M6 build I was running previously, and a few nice enhancements dropped too, everything was copacetic. But this afternoon I got around to testing Android Device Manager, Google’s integrated “find my phone” application, looking to reconfirm that I could locate my phone if it ever got lost, only to receive an unpleasant surprise. I’d log in to Google’s web application and have it persistently fail to locate my device. The map did not move, the “locate device” and “ring” controls did nothing, basically the tool was useless. This was very frustrating since (a) I knew it worked fine the last time I tested it, and (b) it’s a critical function that I wasn’t about to hazard living without.
CyanogenMod Breaks New Ground on Mobile Privacy
While Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook are busy bending knee to their government handlers and/or telling marketing departments what color underwear you have on, the incredibly smart and capable developers of the CyanogenMod aftermarket Android distribution are cooking up compelling and even potentially disruptive mobile privacy technologies.