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The current Android approach of granting all permissions the app need at installation time leads to a lot of abuse like this. Just ask for everything because th
by jknz 9y ago
The current Android approach of granting all permissions the app need at installation time leads to a lot of abuse like this. Just ask for everything because the user just wants to install it and does not read the permission dialog anyway.
The current Apple system is slightly better: when the app asks to use one capability (camera, smartphone, contacts) the user is prompted to Grant permission the first time this capability is requeated by the app.
This approach should be further developed with prompt dialogs to continue allowing the app to use the requested capabilities.
Examples:
The App XYZ is requesting read and write access to your contacts. It was granted access on {date} and has read 224 phone numbers, 121 names and 56 addresses and modified two contacts.
Continue allow access? Disallow? Report?
App XYZ is requesting access to microphone. In the last month it accessed and recorded 342 hours of microphone.
Continue allow access?Disallow? Report?
App XYZ is accessing your geolocation in the background. Permission was granted on XXX. During the last month it accessed to your geolocation approximately 461 times every day.
Continue allow access?Disallow? Report?
Apple Goole and others don't have to get on the way of every users all the time with these prompts. They can identify at which time to show this prompt based on analytics (how many users already reported this app etc). They can also identify users who are more privacy aware and that will be glad to read carefully these dialogs and report wrongdoing, and send more prompts to these users.
- jchw 9y agoAndroid no longer always grants all permissions upon install and in fact offers something more like the Apple model. This is as of Android 6 and I believe it is more or less required nowadays for new apps to use certain permissions. https://developer.android.com/training/permissions/requesting.html https://developer.android.com/training/permissions/requestin...
- jdietrich 9y agoPermissions can also be revoked after the fact in the app settings menu. https://www.howtogeek.com/230683/how-to-manage-app-permissions-on-android-6.0/ https://www.howtogeek.com/230683/how-to-manage-app-permissio...
- akavel 9y agoI remember recently reading somewhere, that apparently if you build an app targeting an old enough version of Android, you get the old behavior as a "backwards compatibility" feature — reportedly kept even in the newest versions of Android. I don't have time to search for the link to the article now however, sorry.
- UncleMeat 9y agoTargeting very old versions is soon going to be banned from the play store.
- bestnameever 9y agoMy Android phone provides prompts to have me grant access to certain features. It also lets me know when apps use certain permissions in the background.
- bschwindHN 9y ago> The current Android approach of granting all permissions the app need at installation time leads to a lot of abuse like this. Just ask for everything because the user just wants to install it and does not read the permission dialog anyway. This hasn't been true for some years now https://inthecheesefactory.com/blog/things-you-need-to-know-about-android-m-permission-developer-edition/en https://inthecheesefactory.com/blog/things-you-need-to-know-...