[Discuss] Android privacy

[Edward Ned Harvey (blu)]

> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Tom Metro
> 
> I'm not sure in the end it is all that useful, if you are technical
> enough to read and understand the permissions yourself.

This whole concept doesn't work very well...  Because everything requires extremely invasive permissions.  You want a music player?  It can use internet, detect call status, monitor calls, and other stuff like that.  Why?  So the music player can shut itself off when you receive a call.  And it can display ads.  And it can look up album art and lyrics.

You install a flashlight.  It can monitor your calls and use internet.  Why?  Because it has two modes of operation:  Turn the screen white, or illuminate the LED.  If it's in screen whitening mode, you want to be able to detect inbound calls, so it can quit and allow you to take the call.  Why's it need internet?  Because it's free, and that's where the ads come from.


> I get why Google didn't make this an "ask and grant" setting for each
> permission, as it would end up being like the application firewall in
> Windows Vista that just pestered users with a barrage of dialogs asking
> for permission to do stuff, which I'm sure most users just said yes to
> everything. Doing so would be a usability mess.

I think somebody here said ...  The application requests a set of permissions as defined by the developer, and in order to install the app you must accept all those permissions, but there's an app you can install, to selectively take away some of the permissions from some of the apps.  Right?

The problem there is...  Everyone's going to remove internet access from all the apps that use ads.  Developers don't get paid and stuff like that.