[space_traveler]

Just wondering if there's any plans to release a firewall for the Playbook that will control any apps that may try to connect out to the internet (and possibly send data) without your knowledge. Perhaps on the new 2.0 OS?

Also, anyone know if the AVG free anti-virus (for android tablets) might run on the PB 2.0 OS or even on the current PB OS?

Thanks.

[peter9477]

There are no such plans public (though there is already a firewall in the PB, for the system as a whole, but likely just for incoming connections).

As far as protecting from individual "bad" apps, I expect what we'll eventually see (at least, I hope we do) is that RIM actually exposes the "access_internet" restricted permission which is present in the system but effectively ignored for now.

There are a bunch of permissions, such as for letting apps access the camera, GPS, shared files, and microphone. Not all of them are actually used yet, possibly because RIM wanted to take some time to see what developers actually did with apps, how many used the internet and for what, and so on. I'm hoping that shortly after 2.0 or along with 2.0 they'll actually start enforcing the access_internet permission, and we'll finally have control. There are certainly many apps to which I would deny that permission, as they have no need (in my view) to be sending any data anywhere, or retrieving it.

[space_traveler]

Ah, that would be good if they enable internet access permission, wasn't aware of that. Would probably use less resources than a 3rd party firewall app also. I don't want anything accessing the net without my full permission. Looking forward to seeing what's new when 2.0 is released. Thanks.