Phone numbers … handled by two phone numbers. By writing my own app, I know exactly what is sent out from my phone, and all content is encrypted from cradle to grave, so even if an app were to intercept the login info, it would be useless to them. A bit of an annoyance to be sure, but one that I’ll live with right now rather than having the content of my email sent to lord knows who (or keywords indexed etc). I have written a small Android app to notify me if an email is received in one of my business email accounts, and then use a laptop/pc to access. If a client sends an email to one of my ‘fun’ accounts by accident, it won’t come through as I have a redirect at the server level so the phone never gets it. What about you? Do you check permissions before you install apps?Įmails … easy … I don’t have my regular email accounts on the phone. I'm not saying that this is the case for the applications and games listed above but I prefer to play it safe. While leaking is bad enough, there is also the chance that applications abuse the permissions for malicious activities. I don't want my contacts lists, call history or messages to leak to some obscure database on the Internet. The first is that I want to avoid privacy-invading applications. There may be explanations for some or even all of the requested permissions but since they were not listed on the apps' page on Google Play, I could not verify those. Solid Explorer File Manager: Requested Identity and Device ID & call information.Retrica, an Instagram like app: Requested Device & Call informatino.Lumi, a news app: Requested Device & app history, identity, contacts, and Device ID & call information.Iconic Quiz, a quiz game: Requested device & app history, identity and device ID & call information.Flow Home, an Android launcher: Requested Identity, Contacts and Location.Here are some examples of apps and games that I did not install because of the permissions they requested: Whenever I click the install button on Google Play, I go through all permissions that an app requests to determine whether it makes sense that it requests those. I do think that most permissions can be critical in one way or the other though, especially if they are requested by an app or game that should not need those for its functionality If you look at Android's permission groups, you may find permissions listed there that you consider critical while you may not have issues with others. Obviously, if I would install a messaging applications that supports SMS, that permission would make sense and I would not have issues installing it based on that. There may be an explanation for that but it is not listed on the Google Play page of the app, and since I cannot think of a reason, I canceled the installation. I cannot come up with a single reason why an Internet Radio application would require access to the SMS system on the device. I like the concept but when I noticed that it requires SMS permissions, I canceled the installation process immediately. The sole reason why I'm canceling the installation dialog after hitting the install button on Google Play is if an application requests permissions that I think it does not require for functionality.įor instance, I stumbled upon Music Radio recently which plays songs that you enter using Internet Radio. I do skip the installation of Android apps that I discover fairly often though, probably 50% or even more than that.
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