I think it 's highly suspicious and even alarming when you install an app that has nothing to do...

[G+_George Kozi]

Originally shared by George Kozi

 

I think it's highly suspicious and even alarming when you install an app that has nothing to do with your contacts, but it stil asks for permission to access them... Why?

[G+_Chris Clark]

An email client or any type of messenger uses this permission to do exactly what it says — read your contacts. But so will something like a home screen widget that can hold a shortcut to a person. Or Twitter or Facebook — they want to be able to find friends of yours who also use their service or make it easy for you to spam the ones who don't. "Contacts" is a broad term because so much information can be stored for an individual contact. We see this one on games that have leaderboards a lot, too. Anything that can put you in touch with anyone else will probably need this permission.

 

Permission to write to your contacts follows the same logic — if an app can add a friend it might need this permission to do it. In this case "write" means modify or add to your contacts list, not write a message to a contact.

 

https://www.androidcentral.com/look-application-permissions

[G+_Anibal Perez]

So what app are we freaking out over today?

[G+_George Kozi]

Oh, I'm not freaking out about it. I just said no. First we had programs. Big beasts that did A LOT of stuff.

 

Then someone thought "oh that's so old fashioned,. Let's have small little baby programs that do one thing. We'll call them Apps".

 

Now the little apps want to do more and more and hope to one day grow up and become proper software programs, just like their grandpa used to be back in the 90's...

 

The app was Runtastic. I use it as a standalone on my tablet to track my kilometers hiked. That's all.

[G+_George Kozi]

And do answer the questions that I see inevitably emerging: I use a hiking app on my tablet because i hate looking at maps on midget screens.

[G+_Michael Shada]

George Kozi I totally agree with you.

The problem is too many apps want to share your score, or steps, or whatever, with friends. (And do marketing to your list) If you want to share that's ok. If you DON'T want to share, that should be ok too.

But if a flashlight app wants my contact list, my answer is hell NO! and I look for another.

[G+_George Kozi]

a first it was "embrace the app!"

nowadays, the default is suspicion.

[G+_bil Jeschke]

I have been spolied my Oreo since I can still install the app and use it, but block it from contacts and such.

Installed an app on my old S4 which I use as a media controller, and the app will not install unless it can access the microphone. Oh well, I really just curious about the app, but now I'll never know. ?