Guardexa - See who tried to unlock your Android phone
by•
Guardexa is an Android phone protection app that captures evidence after failed PIN, pattern, or password attempts. Depending on your settings, it can take front or rear photos, record short videos, include optional location, and show private alerts after you unlock. On-device Owner Recognition helps reduce false alerts, and your face data never leaves your phone.
Replies
interesting idea, but how can we trust the data this app is collecting is managed safely?
@mjohnson42 that’s a fair question. the app doesn’t require an account, and captured photos, videos, location, and incident history stay in private storage on the device. none of that evidence is uploaded to our servers.
for email alerts, the app only requests Google’s limited permission to send an email on your behalf, usually to yourself. that permission does not provide access to read your inbox or other emails.
limited analytics and crash reporting are used, but captured evidence is never included. the full data flow is explained in the privacy policy on the website.
https://guardexa.app/privacy-policy
Honestly the on-device face recognition is a nice touch for cutting down false alerts, but one thing I'd love to see is a quick way to review captured attempts in a timeline view, basically grouped by date with thumbnails so I can scroll through them faster. Right now I imagine digging through individual alerts would get tedious, kind of like a mini security log.
@caner334669 thanks for the suggestion. Guardexa already groups consecutive failed attempts into one event, shows the attempt count, and includes a thumbnail for quick review..
it also classifies activity by severity: an alert for a failed attempt, suspicious activity for repeated attempts, and an incident when attempts continue until Android temporarily blocks further unlocks.
give it a try when you get a chance. it’s been carefully designed, and i think you’ll find it very robust.
Love how the private alerts wait until you unlock to surface, that's a thoughtful UX choice that keeps the security loop feeling natural instead of intrusive. On-device face matching is a nice touch too.
@arzu3xpy thank you! that was exactly the goal with private alerts, to keep Guardexa discreet while still showing everything once the owner unlocks the phone. glad that came through..
The on-device face matching is a really thoughtful touch here, especially since most security apps either skip that step or push it to the cloud. Love that your actual biometric data stays put.
@englaltmhlbp really appreciate that.. keeping face matching fully on-device was important for both privacy and speed, so i’m glad you noticed it!
the on-device face matching answer covers the privacy side well, but I'm curious about the OS mechanics - newer Android versions restrict camera access for apps that aren't in the foreground specifically to stop exactly this kind of covert capture. how does Guardexa get around that on recent Android versions to actually take a photo from a locked screen, is it running as a special accessibility/device-admin service, and does that requirement get flakier with each Android release
@galdayan great question. the app doesn’t use Accessibility or bypass Android’s restrictions. it relies on Android’s official Device Admin failed-password event, then uses a short-lived native foreground service declared for camera use, with permission granted by the user.
this foreground-service use was also declared and reviewed through Google Play during publishing.
behavior can still vary across Android versions and manufacturers, so the app includes a built-in live compatibility test during setup to verify capture works correctly on each device.