Notes (Privacy Friendly)

Privacy Friendly Notes allows you to take and manage notes on Android devices. It belongs to the Privacy Friendly Apps group developed by the research group SECUSO at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. More information can be found an secuso.org/pfa

The following four types of notes are available:

1. Simple text notes

2. Checklist notes

3. Audio notes

4. Sketchnotes

Furthermore, the notes can be grouped into categories, reminders can be assigned to notes and the notes can be exported to the device storage.

How does Privacy Friendly Notes from other similar apps?

1. Minimal Permissions

The permission "RECORD_AUDIO" (Category "Mikrofon") is required to record audio notes. In case this permission is not granted by the user (in Android versions higher than 6) it will not be possible to record audio notes.

"WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" (Category "Speicher") is used to export notes to the device storage. In case this permission is not granted by the user (in Android versions higher than 6) it will not be possible to export notes.

Beside the permissions above the permission “RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED” (Category “Normal/non-critical”) is required to reschedule notifications after a reboot. This permission cannot be modified by the user.

For comparison: The Top Ten of similar apps from the Google Play Store require an average of 11,7 permissions (in December 2016). These are for instance the location permission or the permissions to access, modify or delete storage.

2. No advertisement

Moreover, Privacy Friendly Notes distinguishes from many other applications in the way that it completely relinquishes advertisements. Advertisement might track a user's actions. It could also shorten battery life or use mobile data.

You can reach us via

Bluesky - @secusoresearch.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/secusoresearch.bsky.social

Mastodon - @SECUSO_Research@bawü.social https://xn--baw-joa.social/@SECUSO_Research/

Job opening - https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/Job_Offers.php