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Why android app requires access to microphone, photos and multimedia files?
by kubelsmieci 8y ago
Why android app requires access to microphone, photos and multimedia files?
- AntonyGarand 8y agoThey mentionned it in the article, this is required and only used by the third-party bug-reporting service (instabug)
- dknecht 8y agoThe permission request is being removed as we speak.
- zenlot 8y agoI would be careful of using the service further after this. I doubt it was only required for generating bug reports.
- scrollaway 8y agoI wonder what use you think Cloudflare has for your voice data.
- tinus_hn 8y agoYou can sell microphone data for correlating ads you see on TV to sites you browse to.
- scrollaway 8y agoI know what you can do with the data. My question was more specific than that: What use does Cloudflare have for the data? Cloudflare, the company that already has a hugely profitable business, excellent privacy-friendly track record, etc. I'm always amused when there's suggestions that a company like Cloudflare could in any way benefit from that. To recap, the company that has access to your DNS queries would embed a Microphone spy in their Android app, for a short period of time, risking their massively profitable enterprise business, just so they could shadily resell the few days worth of data they may have gotten for that. There's so many good conspiracy theories to think about. Why would you choose this one?
- lreeves 8y agoYou're not just giving microphone data to Cloudflare though but to the third party SDK using it (which CF may or may not have the source to and may have very different goals, security policies and so on than CF themselves).
- scarface74 8y agoIt’s not just about what CloudFlare could do. CloudFlare is supposedly doing this for privacy reasons but they have third party code in thier product that we don’t know if they have the source code to. Neither you nor they know what this third party code is doing.
- zenlot 8y agoIt's not about what I think, it's about why CF would request access to your microphone data in favor of giving DNS Service at 1.1.1.1. In the Android app they advertise: "Greater privacy". What privacy does it provide giving application access to microphone?
- scrollaway 8y agoThey explained what was happening and that they're changing it. Further conspiracy theories are unjustified imo.
- lreeves 8y agoIt is remarkable that anybody building an application with the stated purpose of securing someone's privacy would launch with this permission.
- msoliman 8y agoExactly. The Microphone access is only required when you want to report a bug or send feedback with a voice memo attached. Instabug cofounder here.
- lreeves 8y agoSo you're trying to train people to accept microphone access for apps that don't need it on the off-chance a user submits a bug report with a voice memo? I strongly recommend for the entire security ecosystem of mobile users that you don't do this, that's pretty awful. If you get your way for this "feature" then malicious apps will be able to use the exact same excuse.
- newscracker 8y agoI'm also concerned with such permissions and getting users accustomed to granting them for any and every app that asks for them (users don't need to be made more complacent than they are).
- stevenjohns 8y agoCan you share numbers of how many people are actually using the voice memo feature?
- newscracker 8y agoAnd also which languages they use it with and how that's handled (if it is) would be nice to know.
- tinus_hn 8y agoThat is a really bad excuse. I’m glad iOS doesn’t allow that.
- scarface74 8y agoAnd this is somehow okay? There is a third party binary blob embedded in CloudFlare’s app that needs microphone, photos and multimedia files? Uhh no.