GuestLocker – Share Your Device – Keep Your Data Safe

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Developed by Santa Monica based WeezLabs, GuestLocker is an Android security app that allows you to freely hand off your device to friends and family while protecting the data that you wish to remain private and secure. Bellow is our recent interview with Samuel Strasser from GuestLocker team:

Q: Samuel, tell us please what is GuestLocker?

A: GuestLocker allows you to keep your personal and confidential information private and secure without guest users ever knowing they have limited access.

It’s perfect for any parent who has lent their child their phone, or a co-worker who has asked to borrow a phone for a quick call, Guest Locker enables owners to set up a guest user account on their mobile device. With completely customizable settings, the owner can restrict access to photos and files, text messages, contacts, apps and more ensuring that their information stays secure no matter whose hands their device is in. Unlike other security apps, there is no rooting required to use Guest Locker. Owners simply create two login passwords – one for themselves and one for a guest. The admin password maintains normal profile settings, while the guest password provides access to only approved information. With Guest Locker’s beautifully designed and easy to use interface, guests won’t even realize their access is restricted.

Q: What was your inspiration for developing it?

A: At WeezLabs we work with people, mobile phones & apps everyday. Often we were using our personal phones for work and had to constantly delete & re install confidential apps so that others couldn’t see it. We grew even more tired of our friends asking to see the apps that were locked or had “restricted access”. One day we all asked ourselves how do you really keep an app secret when everyone can see it? The answer was simple, don’t hang the carrot in front of the horse, make it invisible so they never know it was there in the first place. We couldn’t find anything that was perfect for our needs, so naturally we decided to build it ourselves. That’s where the idea of Guest Locker came from. Easy to install, easy to use yet granular enough app customize for your specific needs.

Q: How long did it take to put together GuestLocker?

A: The development from start to finish took us a bit more than 7 month, preceding by the “creative” stage of development which included wireframing and design and lasted for about a month

Q: What was technically the most challenging part of developing it?

A: Technically the most challenging part of developing Guest Locker was to find a way to neatly customize a wide range of security settings without having users to root their phones. It was a long journey of integrating our code into Android platform at a very low-level, sometimes replacing standard Android features with GL code snippets.