acra: don't send "android id"

Question

My acra bug reports show up in BugSense with a field "Android ID".

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I tested this, and it remains constant between application installations. we do not want to send any information that can be used to track the user. Is there a way to avoid sending such data?

I'm not customizing the report data at all, so it's all defaults. I do not grant the READ_PHONE_STATE permission, so I'd expect that would prevent "Android ID" from being sent to BugSense.

any ideas?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 06 '12 at 19:23

1

You could try customReportContent, per https://github.com/ACRA/acra/wiki/AdvancedUsage#wiki-Choosing_which_fields_to_be_included_in_reports. According to the docs, "Only fields which are set in customReportContent are actually processed".

From their sample code:

@ReportsCrashes(formKey = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx", 
            customReportContent = { APP_VERSION, ANDROID_VERSION, PHONE_MODEL, CUSTOM_DATA, STACK_TRACE, LOGCAT },                
            mode = ReportingInteractionMode.TOAST,
            resToastText = R.string.crash_toast_text)

answered Nov 06 '12 at 19:23

CommonsWare

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i'm hoping there's a way to exclude a value, vs. enumerating every single field other than android id. – Jeffrey Blattman Nov 06 '12 at 20:14
@JeffreyBlattman: I am not aware that ACRA offers that. The value in question is presumably the `ANDROID_ID` value from `android.provider.Settings.System`. I agree that this should toggle-able independently, but that's probably a feature you would need to request. – CommonsWare Nov 06 '12 at 20:19
this worked, although i'm not sure why. there's a `ReportField` for device ID, but that says it's the IMEI number and requires `READ_PHONE_STATE` to send (which i did not grant). i don't know exactly which field i removed resulted in the android id not being sent. – Jeffrey Blattman Nov 07 '12 at 19:40

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 12 '13 at 18:36

Enable/disable including DeviceID #

If you added the READ_PHONE_STATE permission to your application but want to let your user be able to disable the inclusion of their Device ID in crash reports, you can include the following CheckBoxPreference:

 <CheckBoxPreference android:key="acra.deviceid.enable"
    android:title="@string/pref_acra_deviceid"
    android:summaryOn="@string/pref_acra_deviceid_enabled"
    android:summaryOff="@string/pref_acra_deviceid_disabled" 
    android:defaultValue="true"/>

Don't forget to add the required strings in your strings.xml files.

https://github.com/ACRA/acra/wiki/AdvancedUsage#wiki-Enable/disable_including_DeviceID

that doesn't work. i did not add that permission and never enabled it otherwise. my guess is that "android ID" is different than device ID. the only thing that worked was explicitly calling out the `customReportContent`. — Jeffrey Blattman, Jan 13 '13 at 18:02

acra: don't send "android id"

2 Answers2