'Protecti' Brings A Flurry of Security Options to Your iOS Device

[Anthony Bouchard]

We have seen a myriad of attempted security enhancement tweaks in Cydia before, but not like this. Protecti, by iOS developer gviridis, gives you a plethora of options for keeping people out of your personal, virtual belongings. We all know that our phones keep personal messages, photographs, and histories that should never be searched through by other eyes without permission. Protecti will keep those eyes from ever seeing your personal material and it can be enabled or disabled on demand so that you can keep your phone under high security only when you need it to be.

Unlike the other tweaks in Cydia, Protecti goes far beyond just locking users out of specific applications and then asking for a password every time the app attempts to be opened. Protecti will also disable notifications for your selected applications so the person using your device doesn’t peek upon your notifications. You can also disable the application you choose to lock from being opened in other places like the multitasking App Switcher, SpotLight, or even by tapping on a notification if you don’t have them hidden.

If you choose to disable notifications for the applications you choose, the options for the content you can hide are extensive. You can hide banners, alerts, Notification Center items, lock screen items, badge numbers, or any combination of the aforementioned notification types. Additionally, you can opt for iOS not to show any attachments in the notification – for example getting a picture message in the Messages application – the picture will not be shown in the banner or on the lock screen.

If you don’t disable the notifications, you can simply mess around with the nosy person instead. Protecti comes with a feature to set your own personalized notifications that display when an application tries to display a notification. Instead of letting the application display the notification that it wants to show you, you can use Protecti to show a notification with a title, subtitle, and even its own content that you create right from Protecti’s preferences pane. This is great (and need we mention fun?) because not only can you hide the notifications of your selected applications, but you can also poke fun at the nosy person for not being able to see your notifications. A customized test-banner is shown below:



Apart from all of these larger features, Protecti comes with the miscellaneous features including the ability to use an Activator action to enable and disable the tweak (you can password protect disabling the tweak so you can remain safe without someone else disabling it), disable Notification Center altogether, disable the ability to uninstall applications from your home screen, disable the ability to move your home screen applications around, disable Siri, disable pasteboard, and even hide your photographs. The full preferences pane (long, but fully-featured) is shown below:



Clarifying some gray areas of Protecti:

"Well can’t the user just disable Protecti from the preferences pane?" – If you lock the settings application from being opened while Protecti is enabled, the user will not be able to access the preferences pane and therefore cannot disable your security tweak on you.

"What happens when you lock applications with Protecti?" – Applications locked with Protecti cannot be launched until Protecti is disabled. Tapping on them will yield no response. Applications that are not locked can be launched as usual.

"What if the user figures out my Activator action and disables Protecti?" – If you choose not to have a password with Protecti, this would mean the user has access to everything. You can guard against this by having a password with Protecti. Once invoking the Activator action, Protecti will ask the user to enter your password to release Protecti's grips from the iOS device.

Need a security application for iOS? Protecti is likely one of the most fully featured security tweaks on Cydia today. It comes in at $2.99 to grab a copy, however the features are very extensive and offer you personalization, beyond what anybody with intent of looking at your personal belongings, would be able to figure out. It works great, all features are planned for security, and you will enjoy this tweak. You will need to be running iOS 5 to install Protecti.

Name: Protecti
Price: $2.99
Version: 0.7
Requirements: iOS 5
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: gviridis
Editor's Rating:  4/5

Sources: gviridis

[Hyshai29]

Relies on MobileSubstrate? Is not a "security" tweak. (Just reboot phone and hold volume up button.)

[DarkXShadowX21]

Relies on MobileSubstrate? Is not a "security" tweak. (Just reboot phone and hold volume up button.)

What does this do?

[celeron]

What does this do?

Disables Mbile Substrate

[iRockADI]

What does this do?

Just restart springboard on safe mode and everything is disabled, even this security tweak...

[aidanharris]

What does this do?

Disables mobile substrate when booting for example if you have a dodgy tweak that has sent you into a respring loop instead of just restoring you can just hold volume up to disable mobile substrate and then uninstall it with cydia...Besides if someone has your device all someone has to do is plug your device into their PC or mac open Ifunbox and there you go instant access to your entire file system what we really need from a tweak is a way to encrypt/decrypt the data partition of our devices then your device is properly secure...

[3xpl05iv3]

What does this do?

It disables mobile substrate (with it all tweaks that use it)
This will get around any security features that rely on it, Its a safety feature Saurik added to prevent bugged apps forcing restores

[mj0528]

It was working nice except for crashing when it was enabled during notification swype last night. Then this morning, couldn't deactivate it. Made it crash and then removed. Good theory of an app but needs major work!

Would applocker conflict with this?

[ddonuts4]

Relies on MobileSubstrate? Is not a "security" tweak. (Just reboot phone and hold volume up button.)

If you have half a brain, you will password protect your phone. It requests a password every respring/reboot of course, rendering this safe mode 'hack' useless.

[oneduality]

It's still a useful tweak if you have nosy friends who don't know anything about jailbreaks.. but it's obviously super simple to get around if you know how.

[iRockADI]

It's still a useful tweak if you have nosy friends who don't know anything about jailbreaks.. but it's obviously super simple to get around if you know how.

agree

[ddonuts4]

It's still a useful tweak if you have nosy friends who don't know anything about jailbreaks.. but it's obviously super simple to get around if you know how.

I agree, but unless I'm missing something, it's actually more useful than you may think. They still need to know your passcode to get around it. If they boot into safe mode, they are immediately prompted for it.

[gviridis]

I'm sorry for that. I'm the developer of Protecti. Could you send me more detail from Cydia contact? It will be valuable for the improvement of Protecti.
Maybe it is caused by conflict with other tweaks. Because Protecti provide many custom settings, so it must hook many system methods, so it is easy to conflict with other tweak.
I think it perhaps conflict with Applocker. I will test it.

It was working nice except for crashing when it was enabled during notification swype last night. Then this morning, couldn't deactivate it. Made it crash and then removed. Good theory of an app but needs major work!

Would applocker conflict with this?

[mj0528]

I'm sorry for that. I'm the developer of Protecti. Could you send me more detail from Cydia contact? It will be valuable for the improvement of Protecti.
Maybe it is caused by conflict with other tweaks. Because Protecti provide many custom settings, so it must hook many system methods, so it is easy to conflict with other tweak.
I think it perhaps conflict with Applocker. I will test it.

I uninstalled applocker and issue is resolved. Only issues is that I have intelliscreenx and when I lock notifications and swype down, it goes to safe mode. Great app though!!!

[bigliquid530]

They should add the option that is if someone puts in the wrong code the front facing camera takes a pic kinda would be cool

[gviridis]

I will try to fix this conflict.
Thanks for your reply. If you have any other question or suggestion, please tell me.

I uninstalled applocker and issue is resolved. Only issues is that I have intelliscreenx and when I lock notifications and swype down, it goes to safe mode. Great app though!!!

Good idea !
I also wanna add more log feature.
I will try to do this.

They should add the option that is if someone puts in the wrong code the front facing camera takes a pic kinda would be cool

[WaGGuM]

great great service and responsiveness - real nice to see and, from what I've seen, a real nifty tweak!

[mj0528]

Yes, it's great!

[gviridis]

I agree, but unless I'm missing something, it's actually more useful than you may think. They still need to know your passcode to get around it. If they boot into safe mode, they are immediately prompted for it.

I add a new feature for Protecti. You can set system pass code to protect your device in safe mode; and in normal mode, this feature can bypass system pass code. So you do not need input pass code every time unlock screen. Just input pass code in safe mode.

[iRockADI]

I add a new feature for Protecti. You can set system pass code to protect your device in safe mode; and in normal mode, this feature can bypass system pass code. So you do not need input pass code every time unlock screen. Just input pass code in safe mode.

Great!!!