Is there an effective way to remove trackers from apps?
I use Apk Editor Pro for Android to remove trackers. This application works with a Manifest file, but trackers are not always located in this file. I don’t know what other files may contain trackers, how can I edit them and compile the application on my phone.
At my previous company we edited apks to add performance trackers. We modified the dex code directly. It was not easy, but it is possible. Some apps are obfuscated, which makes finding libraries hard. But a principal we used was to look for where the app called into the system code, especially around URL requests. So you could look for all calls to the system network libraries, and identify which ones were calls to tracker systems, and no-op those bytes.
But, it’s probably much easier to just use the adguard dns server.
I don’t use Android but I use a DNS server to block ad/tracking domains completely.
It’s probably not as “clean” as editing APKs directly but it does the job and it does it well across all apps and websites. As a bonus, it’s TLS DNS so it prevents eavesdropping (at least at the DNS level).
Honestly I run my own DNS server that’s configured to combine a shit ton of block lists.
But lately I’ve been sending all my traffic via WireGuard to a VPS where I have a subnet for peers to communicate on as well as a WireGuard tunnel for my multi-hop consumer VPN. It’s nice because my DNS server there caches everything from the VPN tunnel so that it’s a lot smoother.
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