What is Lia Informant? It is a Malware?
It is a stock app that comes as a part of the LG proprietary custom ROM. Its package name is ‘com.lge.ia.task.informant’. What it does is works as a tool to show all the information related to the LG Services in Smart Notice Widget. I saw many people searching about whether it was a spy app. Let me make it very clear LIA Informant is not Spyware. It is completely safe to have in your smartphone as it is officially from LG. You can have it on your phone and enjoy the benefits of the Smart Notice Widget, But still, if you want to disable it you can easily do so. I will also suggest you do so because Lia Informant has access to almost everything on your smartphone and that information is always shared with apps. It can lead to a serious privacy concern for many. I will add a guide on how you can do so in this article. But I will mainly be discussing Lia Informant, how it works behind the scenes to provide updates in the Smart Notice widget. What are the privacy concerns you might face?
View Network Connections
The very first thing LIA Informant does is It views the network connections. There are many apps available in a smartphone that needs network connections. In this case, LIA Informant comes handy as it allows those apps to view important information related to network connections. Here Network connections are meant to be which Network is available on the smartphone. It is in the connected or disconnected state.
Directly Access Callings
The next feature LIA Informant provides is Directly Access Callings. What is it? It tries to make calling easier. How, By making calls to phone numbers by any sort of instructions. It can easily leave you a position in which you haven’t made the call but the call is connected. But the best part is It never calls emergency numbers. This is the reason some people take it as a Spy app trying to make some money by making random calls without the owner’s permission.
Full Network Access
It is also used to provide Full Network access. It allows you to use custom sockets and create network sockets on your device. All of this is done by applications like Web Browsers. As you know browsers are used to send data over the Internet. Such behavior is not good as it never asks for any permission while sending data leaving user privacy in danger.
Read The Required Data
Whether you should take it as advantage or disadvantage LIA Informant is capable of giving permission to apps to your calendar, events and other confidential information. Applications can get all data related to your calendar and events without your confirmation.
Read Call Log Details
Talking about reading Call logs, Lia Informant allows apps to read call logs of your smartphone. All the incoming call and outgoing call information is read by apps. It also allows apps having call logs to save those data.
Read Your Contacts Info
In the case of Contacts, Lia Informant reads your contacts. It has details of all your contacts and the no of times you have called those contacts, emailed the contacts or in medium, you have made a contact with your contact book. It also gives access to apps to save the contacts data that can easily lead to your contacts being left vulnerable to malicious apps and you end up getting Spam calls.
Read the Content of SD Card
Lia Informant can also read the content available on any SD card available on your smartphone. The data will be accessed by apps leaving your personal photos and videos to be leaked.
Read Your Current Phone State
It can also read your phone state. The Phone state can include anything from the apps you are using right now, any outgoing call details, information related to the network, and many more. This can lead to one more serious privacy issue.
Read Text Messages Of Your Phone
Lia Informant is also responsible for allowing apps to read your text messages. Some of the apps can read your text message whether saved on SIM Card or Phone. It can be serious because there is so much confidential information shared in text messages.
Run at Startup Automatically
If you have forced closed Lia Informant and think no data is being shared. You should know that It starts running at a startup. So in case If you reboot your smartphone. It starts automatically. It is obvious that the auto start-up process will lead to a longer time for your phone to boot. Alternatively, your phone can become slower because one such app is always running in the background.
How To Uninstall Lia Informant From Your Smartphone?
After reading all the points mentioned above. Why should I leave Lia Informant in my smartphone when it is so risky. Nothing to worry below is a complete step by step guide by following that you can easily make your smartphone Lia Informant free.
Open Settings in your smartphone and go to Developer options.Enable USB Debugging in the Developer options.Now Go To Your Windows PC and Download ADB in it.Extract the Zip file of ADB and save all the contents of it in a separate folder.Now go ahead and open the Promot a.k.a Powershell window in that folder.Type .\adb devices command to make the daemon up and running.Once you have done all the above steps now it’s time to connect your smartphone to your Windows PC using a Data Cable. If you will successfully make the connection your phone’s serial number will be shown.Once your smartphone is connected run this command\adb shell pm uninstall –user 0 com.lge.ia.task.informant
Once you have gone through all the above steps. Now your phone will be free from Lia Informant. You can safely use your phone without getting worried about privacy issues created by Lia Informant.
Bottom Line
Now you have a good idea about what a Lia Informant is and what is its use. How it works with LG Services to provide information in the Smart Notice widget. The permission it has and what challenges you might face. For your sake of convenience, I have also mentioned the ways by which you can easily install it from your smartphone. Now I hope you are fully aware of it. Do you still have anything in your mind related to Lia Informant? Then ask me in the comments section. I will be more than happy to discuss all the queries. Also Read:
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