WELL, GOOD: Android privacy assistant seeks to stop unwanted data collection.

“It’s very clear that a large percentage of people are not willing to give their data to any random app,” said CMU professor Norman Sadeh. “They want to be more selective with their data, so this assistant will help them do that.”

Their Privacy Assistant is designed to automatically modify your phone’s privacy settings for you, based on your views about certain types of data collection.

For instance, when the app first starts up, it’ll ask you three to five questions to gauge your privacy preferences. How do you feel about your social media accessing your camera? Or what about game apps pulling your location data?

From those answers, the app will recommend a particular set of privacy settings you should consider. Users can then approve the recommendations or alter them, accordingly.

The assistant may sound enticing, but it comes with a catch. The software works only with Android 5.x and 6.x phones that have been rooted — which most Android users haven’t done.

Rooting your phone also leaves it more susceptible to malware, viruses, and scammers, as well as voiding your warranty. In other words, Privacy Assistant comes with risks of its own.