On the market, there's an application called App Protector, which
seems to effectively block the launching of configured activities
until a password is correctly provided. By default, it blocks access
to itself (not very interesting), Settings, and a few others. I wrote
my own app to launch settings (rather than doing so through the home
screen) and App Protector continued to do the job it claims to do.

When an activity that is protected is started, App Protector's
password input activity is shown instead. Once the correct password is
provided, the activity that was started comes to the front.

First -- does anyone know how this app is able to get between the rest
of the system and the activities it protects? I would like to do
something along these lines in my own application as well. Perhaps
this app is receiving a broadcast about other activities coming to the
foreground, and when the foreground activity is protected, it forces
itself to the foreground?

Second -- does anyone know how well this technique will stand up to
attack? Are there other ways to circumvent, where startActivity(...)
fails to? It seems that one could use adb to uninstall it, thus
removing its protection easily, but if I pursue my plans here, the app
will be a part of a device's firmware (which, I assume, offers some
protection against its apps being installed?)

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