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This is like saying we should give everyone root access because there are legitimate situations where that is warranted and not misused. I mean, I might trust

This is like saying we should give everyone root access because there are legitimate situations where that is warranted and not misused. I mean, I might trust my neighbor with the key to my apartment, but I'll still call the cops when he comes in and trashes the place. Similarly, maybe there are valid reasons for Uber to have these permissions. That doesn't mean they can upload a dump of whatever data they can find to their servers.

andymcsherry 12y ago
There's a difference between checking if root access can be granted and gaining root access. If Uber were to use this access, the superuser app would prompt the user to approve it. The user would then have to grant permission. There's no proof in this article that they are uploading this data to their servers, just speculation. The snippet of some methods he showed doesn't even make sense, because they don't ask for permissions for your SMS, MMS or other permissions required for these things.
- revelation 12y ago
  That was a metaphore. Also, as you are certainly aware, Android apps don't ask for permissions through code, they request them in various metadata manifests.