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Google makes money by selling data about you to advertisers.
This is their business model.
It accounts for 100% of their profits and enables them to play around with glasses and cars.
Google controls Android.
This is complete nonsense. I love how people just make stuff up. 34.9% of their revenue, alone, is based off of displaying ads on their desktop web browser search engine (Google). The rest comes from other platforms including mobile advertising, enterprise services, appliances, and transaction feed. Selling data is not Google's core business (yet).
I'm probably gonna be flamed for this, but I don't suggest using apps on a smartphone to begin with because many of them can't be trusted.
I agree! I just got my first smart phone Friday,and have been looking for a few games to DL,but after seeing how they all seem to be "pay to play" type where you cannot advance or only extremely boringly,slowly unless you buy things for the games, or the 'PERMISSIONS' they require mean the game is total SPYWARE,I have decided there is no way that I am going to deliberately DL SPYWARE, or a crap money-sucking game onto my phone!
Despicable Me: Minion Rush by Gameloft
This application uses a lot of permissions including the ability to start automatically when your system boots (even if you don't want it to run), accessing shared data such as contact lists (even if you don't want it to), and communicating over the Internet. That could be harmless or it could be a mechanism that allows the developers to collect information about you for their use or possible resale.
Nemo's Reef As time passes the goal of this little freebee is how to get you to buy, buy, buy.90% of treasure chests cost you more than you spent, every task wants you to use your resources for no gain, and the final disappointment is now my game is non-functional. The lesson to learn here is not about how a reef and fish interact, but how much money the developers can dupe you out of before the game crashes.
You have a lot to learn.
Did you read any of the very informative posts in this thread?
Yes, I will agree that RUN AT STARTUP is a bad permission. But as several people pointed out, Contact List is access is almost always legit. Gameloft is a well respected company. I promise you that permission is not there to harass your friends. There is probably something built into the game that allows you to invite your friends.
Access the internet is also very legit.
Nemo's Reef? I guess I will not judge you by your choice of games (lolol j\k... tried that game to see if my kid might like it... thought it was awful) but.... yes there are games like that out there. LOTS of them. There are also THOUSANDS of them that are NOT like that. 1,000's upon 1,000's....
You have a lot to learn.
Did you read any of the very informative posts in this thread?
Yes, I will agree that RUN AT STARTUP is a bad permission. But as several people pointed out, Contact List is access is almost always legit. Gameloft is a well respected company. I promise you that permission is not there to harass your friends. There is probably something built into the game that allows you to invite your friends.
Access the internet is also very legit.
Nemo's Reef? I guess I will not judge you by your choice of games (lolol j\k... tried that game to see if my kid might like it... thought it was awful) but.... yes there are games like that out there. LOTS of them. There are also THOUSANDS of them that are NOT like that. 1,000's upon 1,000's....
Have not found hardly any threads on apps,and yes,I like 'cute' games.
I would like the option of actually paying for an app in exchange for limited permissions.
I actually thought I was doing that last week by paying for the pro version of media monkey. Turns out it cannot work on its own so you have to install the free version with many permissions, which defeated the purpose of my purchase. Luckily I was able to get a refund and found something called vanilla music.
You have a lot to learn.
Did you read any of the very informative posts in this thread?
Yes, I will agree that RUN AT STARTUP is a bad permission. But as several people pointed out, Contact List is access is almost always legit. Gameloft is a well respected company. I promise you that permission is not there to harass your friends. There is probably something built into the game that allows you to invite your friends.
Access the internet is also very legit.
Nemo's Reef? I guess I will not judge you by your choice of games (lolol j\k... tried that game to see if my kid might like it... thought it was awful) but.... yes there are games like that out there. LOTS of them. There are also THOUSANDS of them that are NOT like that. 1,000's upon 1,000's....
Okay, but why cannot that part of the game where inviting friends become optional? Why can't there be a series of check boxes for only installing the parts of the app you want? Maybe I don't want my friends to be data-mined, even if they never know it. Maybe I don't want profiles built on me by providing my entire contact list. If they can have my contact list is it okay for me to request the app company's financial statements and addresses/phone numbers of all its employees?
Not commenting on the permissions, I just think that all the check boxes you suggest, would make the apps less user friendly, and people don't like to go over pages of pages of settings to use an app. Apps features are anticipated, but every developer usually ask to share comments and concerns. They update apps frequently, and if there are many of same concerns, I am pretty sure, they would work on them to please the users.
My stance on it is that it is completely OK that apps require whatever permissions.
But you should be able to deny an app those permissions on the operating system level and still install it. To still enable the app in question to run, a denial would mean that bogus data is fed into it (contacts request denied = contact list empty; location request denied = you are always at the north pole, etc).
This was for instance possible in Nokia S40/S60 phones, but stock Android falls short. The feature is there in some versions of Android AOSP variants (Cyanogenmod et al.)
Okay, but why cannot that part of the game where inviting friends become optional?
You're missing the point. It IS optional.
If an app has access to your contacts it is so YOU may initiate sharing with them, or invite them to join your game from within the app or something like that... this does NOT mean the app gets full on "anytime it wants" access to your contacts.
If you never take advantage of this, it never tries to access your contacts.
If you DO take advantage and try to invite a friend to join, the app opens your contact list allowing you to choose who you want to invite... it still is not scanning, reading, or copying your contacts. It is ONLY allowing the app to open your contacts so that you may select someone.
If an app has access to your contacts it is so YOU may initiate sharing with them, or invite them to join your game from within the app or something like that... this does NOT mean the app gets full on "anytime it wants" access to your contacts.
If you never take advantage of this, it never tries to access your contacts.
1. Confirming these statements would require a full analysis of the software code (which can be rather difficult to carry out).
2. An Android app having permission to "access contacts" DOES mean that it at any time has the right to access the data in the phone contact list. Whether it actually does that is another thing, but your post gives the impression that some sort of user intervention is required for the access to happen after an app is installed with said permissions; this is absolutely not the case.
3. My recommendation: Apps that provide both a source of interesting marketable data (such as "access contacts") together with a plausible data sink to get the data out of the phone to a third party (i.e. "access internet connection") - SHOULD BE approached with great caution.
Try to at the very least get these two questions answered before install: Is the app signed and does it come from a reputable company? What is the purpose of the application's access to rather private data? If you get a bad gut feeling from the answers you get, do not install.
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I just got my first smart phone Friday,and have been looking for a few games to DL,but after seeing how they all seem to be "pay to play" type where you cannot advance or only extremely boringly,slowly unless you buy things for the games, or the 'PERMISSIONS' they require mean the game is total SPYWARE,I have decided there is no way that I am going to deliberately DL SPYWARE, or a crap money-sucking game onto my phone!
