[Discuss] Android privacy

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> You install a flashlight.  It can monitor your calls and use 
> internet.  Why?  Because...you want to be able to detect inbound
> calls, so it can quit and allow you to take the call.

I agree that the "monitor your calls" permission, and some others, are
excessively broad. Makes you wonder why they couldn't envision that
there would be a huge number of applications that would need to know
only a simple boolean state of the phone: on-hook (or incoming)/off-hook.


> ...there's an app you can install, to selectively take away some of
> the permissions from some of the apps.  Right?

Yes, but it wasn't designed into the OS and thus developers didn't test
for such a possibility.

Sadly, most developers are lazy, and will skip error handling any place
they aren't forced to have it. So what happens when you start making
resources unavailable is that the apps crash.

These app firewalls accomplish minimizing this by providing libraries
that fake the genuine service, and yet this is still enough of a
difference to crash some apps.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/