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> What's so hard about asking yourself - why the hell would a flashlight app or screensaver want to know my location or my contacts list or whatever? Are people

> What's so hard about asking yourself - why the hell would a flashlight app or screensaver want to know my location or my contacts list or whatever? Are people so dumb that we need to disallow them from hurting themselves? The problem is you are trained to completely ignore permissions. After installing your first 5 apps which all come with a billion permissions and you have no idea what they mean or why they are used, you really stop caring.

bad_user 13y ago
The problem is one of education. Schools should teach classes on protecting your online privacy, because Google or Apple in the end only care about their bottom line and "curation" only works to consumers' benefit as long as it's in these companies' interest. You said "after installing your first 5 apps". Well, I never got past 1, because I never installed an app that asks for unjustified permissions. I also have a non-technical wife that is usually not interested in technical stuff, but if I want to teach her something and I choose the proper words, such that she can understand, then she listens - that's how I taught her to use BCC when emailing multiple people, or to be wary of browser SSL security errors, or to tighten her privacy settings on Facebook, or indeed, to read the permissions required by apps on her Android. Education is the answer, in combination with smarter controls (e.g. optional permissions), instead of making the world a worse place for those of us that can read just fine.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Education is great. In sufficient volume and with a low enough ranking on the "do I have time/inclination for this?" scale, people decide they've had enough and opt to put up with the consequences of not having it. Indeed curation works for Apple insofar as it's in their interest. It's in their interest because people, overwhelmed with other things to deal with in a mere 16 hours a day, choose (among other reasons) to function in the "walled garden" where such crap behavior is screened out and they don't have to worry about it. The Android ecosystem isn't, for most people, appreciably different from the iOS ecosystem; a major differentiator is curation, which while having some downsides, on the whole leads to a better experience of getting to useful apps rather than having to wade well-educated thru a swamp of gratuitous permissions abuse. Sure, one could learn the risks of pre-loaded crapware so prevalent on new Windows computers and learn (it's easy!) how to wipe everything & do a clean OS install to get rid of it ... or get a Mac, which doesn't include any crapware. It's a persuasive option for many people. Likewise Android vs iOS app stores: learn the details of dealing with problems, or just go where you don't have to deal with those problems.

bad_user 13y ago

The problem is one of education. Schools should teach classes on protecting your online privacy, because Google or Apple in the end only care about their bottom line and "curation" only works to consumers' benefit as long as it's in these companies' interest. You said "after installing your first 5 apps". Well, I never got past 1, because I never installed an app that asks for unjustified permissions. I also have a non-technical wife that is usually not interested in technical stuff, but if I want to teach her something and I choose the proper words, such that she can understand, then she listens - that's how I taught her to use BCC when emailing multiple people, or to be wary of browser SSL security errors, or to tighten her privacy settings on Facebook, or indeed, to read the permissions required by apps on her Android. Education is the answer, in combination with smarter controls (e.g. optional permissions), instead of making the world a worse place for those of us that can read just fine.

ctdonath 13y ago
Education is great. In sufficient volume and with a low enough ranking on the "do I have time/inclination for this?" scale, people decide they've had enough and opt to put up with the consequences of not having it. Indeed curation works for Apple insofar as it's in their interest. It's in their interest because people, overwhelmed with other things to deal with in a mere 16 hours a day, choose (among other reasons) to function in the "walled garden" where such crap behavior is screened out and they don't have to worry about it. The Android ecosystem isn't, for most people, appreciably different from the iOS ecosystem; a major differentiator is curation, which while having some downsides, on the whole leads to a better experience of getting to useful apps rather than having to wade well-educated thru a swamp of gratuitous permissions abuse. Sure, one could learn the risks of pre-loaded crapware so prevalent on new Windows computers and learn (it's easy!) how to wipe everything & do a clean OS install to get rid of it ... or get a Mac, which doesn't include any crapware. It's a persuasive option for many people. Likewise Android vs iOS app stores: learn the details of dealing with problems, or just go where you don't have to deal with those problems.