Lumen Privacy Monitor for Android

Lumen analyzes your app's traffic and allows you to stay on control over your app's communication patterns.

Lumen reveals how your mobile apps communicate with tracking services and how they collect sensitive personal information about you. Lumen does not require root permissions and works even on encrypted traffic for most Android versions. In the new version, you can also have a direct access to block undesired flows for a given app and also to configure app permissions to better stay in control over who has access to your personal data.

Lumen is an academic research project led by the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), UC Berkeley and IMDEA Networks to illuminate the mobile ecosystem with real user input. It is sponsored by the NSF (National Science Foundation) and the Data Transparency Lab.

By installing Lumen, you also participate on an academic research project that aims to better understand the mobile app ecosystem. You can see our publication record on our project website https://haystack.mobi/

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question or concerns.

Stay tuned for future updates!

TRAFFIC CONTROL: Lumen allows you to block undesired flows emanating from your apps. This way, you prevent your personal data from being collected by undesired parties.

REQUESTED PERMISSIONS: To identify personal information leakages, Lumen requires a number of permissions so that it knows what values and information it should search for such as your phone number, your text messages, IMEI and location. Note that we *never* forward your traffic to a remote server for analysisall your personal data remains on your phone at all times (see further details below)

PLATFORM SUPPORT: Some Android OS vendors modify the normal behavior of the operating system. It may be possible that Haystack does not run in all the Android phones available today. We are aware of this limitation on some Samsung devices shipped with the KNOX SDK. When this occurs, please do contact us so we can improve Lumen on your device. Android 7 has introduced some features that make difficult implementing TLS interception.

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY OVERHEAD: Lumen intercepts and analyzes your traffic, and so might impact your device performance and battery life depending on your traffic patterns.