Installing or Launching Native Apps

Some malicious sites attempt to launch already-installed native apps, or redirect you to install new native apps from Google Play.

Hermit’s strict privacy settings can guard you against these attempts.

Both are privacy features designed to prevent malicious sites from directly opening links that may affect the operation of your device.

Installing Native Apps

All links to Google Play Store are blocked.

For all such links, Hermit shows a small warning at the bottom to let you know that this attempt is being blocked. You have the option to change your settings to allow this navigation.

Launching Native Apps

Examples of links that will be blocked by these settings are:

• “Share to WhatsApp” which opens the WhatsApp native app.
• “Open in Reddit” which prevents you from reading the page you are on, and takes you to the Play Store instead.
• Any kind of “Get Our App” dialogs that require you to install a native app instead of reading content using the Web app.