How to Access User Data from Third-party Apps on Android

Article posted on : link to source

If you’re developing a DLP or Parent Control solution, chances are, you want as much user data from apps as possible. However, most of the time gathering such data can be fairly difficult. While you can try to reverse engineer iOS app or Android app, this method often proves difficult and time-consuming, while results are not guaranteed.

For Android particularly, most of the time apps store their data in a Sandbox (which is the default and most secure option) where other apps cannot access it. If a developer decides not to store data in another easily accessible area (such as memory card), and not to provide an API for accessing the data, then getting it without root can be very hard.

This means that there is seemingly no way to get Skype, Viber, or KIK messages, or a browser history, which can be extremely frustrating if your solution depends on such data. However, there is actually a fairly elegant solution allowing to get user data on Android without root and without that much of a hassle. And we will cover this solution down the line.

Idea behind a solution

The gist of the idea is very simple – each active page has a layout …

Read More on Datafloq