2

I want to protect my application from being copied by users from device to another device. I know that wont be possible because once the apk is installed any third party application may be able to copy or extract the apk. I mostly care about the private data of the application rather than the apk itself. So, my questions are :

1- Can I protect the apk from being copied to another device by the user ?

2- If user copied an application from device to another (e.g. via third party app or by bluetooth) will he/she be able to copy the private data as well ? If yes, can I protect that ?

Thanks in advance.

MSaudi
  • 4,442
  • 2
  • 40
  • 65

2 Answers2

1

To answer briefly, AFAIK, No. Regarding the single questions:

  1. if device is rooted it's really easy to access the /data/app/ dir and copy your apk, even on the device itself.
    For un-rooted devices you need to issue some adb commands. For reference, look here:
    https://stackoverflow.com/a/11013175/1865860
    https://stackoverflow.com/a/17135554/1865860
    How to get a list of installed android applications and pick one to run
  2. the same applies to /data/data/com.example.app/ for the private app's data. Just different folder and possibly many files to copy.

Basically the difference it's not in having root or not, but in the ease of realization.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
dentex
  • 3,223
  • 4
  • 28
  • 47
  • Okay. Lets say the device is not rooted when the app first installed. The app is not on market, I install it from my PC. Will the user be able in this case to copy the apk ? if he decided to root the device , shouldn't he/she wipe all applications first and in this case wont be able to get the app again (as it is not uploaded to play store) ? – MSaudi Mar 05 '14 at 11:14
0

  • you can use google licence in your app even if its copied from rooted device it wont work until its downloaded from playstore

  • second /data/data/<packagename>/ can be copied from rooted device

Sharanabasu Angadi
  • 4,304
  • 8
  • 43
  • 67