LANShield vs TrackerControl
Side-by-side comparison of two open source alternatives
LANShield
LANShield lets you monitor and control LAN traffic of other apps on your device. Any app with the INTERNET permission can also access devices on your local network—such as your laptop, router, IP camera, or IoT devices. Some apps misuse this capability to gather data or compromise other devices. LANShield helps you protect your local network by blocking LAN access for apps that don’t need it. Features: Block or allow apps from accessing your local network. Gain insights into which apps are interacting with your LAN. Receive notifications when apps attempt to access your LAN. Note: LANShield uses the VpnService API to create a local virtual VPN interface. It does not establish any external VPN connection.
TrackerControl
TrackerControl allows users to monitor and control the widespread, ongoing, hidden data collection in mobile apps about user behaviour ('tracking').To detect tracking, TrackerControl combines the power of the Disconnect blocklist, used by Firefox, and our in-house blocklist is used, created from analysing ~2 000 000 apps! Additionally, TrackerControl supports custom blocklists.This approachreveals the companies behind tracking,allows to block tracking selectively, andexposes the purposes of tracking, such as analytics or advertising.The app also aims to educate about your rights under Data Protection Law, such the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).Under the hood, TrackerControl uses Android's VPN functionality, to analyse apps' network communications locally on the Android device. This is accomplished through a local VPN server, to enable network traffic analysis by TrackerControl.No root is required, other VPNs or Private DNS are not supported. No external VPN server is used, to keep your data safe! TrackerControl even protects you against DNS cloaking, a popular technique to hide trackers in websites and apps.TrackerControl will always be free and open source, being a research project.
| Feature | LANShield | TrackerControl |
|---|---|---|
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0-only |
| Install sources | F-DroidGitHub | F-DroidGitHubIzzyOnDroid |
| Categories | Password ManagerFirewallDev Tools | Password ManagerFirewallDev ToolsBrowser |
| Features | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking |
| Platforms | Android | Android |
| Website | ||
| Source code |