Android word dictionary security issue

Question

Whenever you type a word on an Android phone, the word gets remembered. This is a security issue when using things such as security questions/answers. Is there a way to turn this functionality off? So that, when you type a word, the word isn't stored anywhere.

P.S. I know that you can turn off 'word suggestions', i.e. by using the flag TYPE_TEXT_FLAG_NO_SUGGESTIONS. I've done this, however the words that you use still get stored in the background.

Thanks in advance

EDIT: This happens with custom keyboards such as AnySoftKeyboard, Swype and SwiftKey. Even though these keyboards are configurable to remember and store commonly used words - you want there to be exceptions for things like remembering your answer to security questions.

On Android 2.2+ you can use InputType.TYPE_TEXT_VARIATION_VISIBLE_PASSWORD to achieve the desired functionality on any security field. Despite this flag being available for older versions of Android (from Google API 3+), it seems to have no effect in Android 2.1 (API 7) and below.

Answer 1

It seems like you have answered your own question. Google only added support for what you are trying to do in Android 2.2 and above.

If you need to do this on earlier versions, maybe you could add some code after they exit the field that would go out to the user dictionary and remove the words that were entered in the field. I know its a kludge that doesn't completely close the security hole but its a start.