Dianne, > Sorry but you are wrong. When my wife got her Droid and started installing > apps, she quickly came to me asking about a game she was installing that > said it would read her contact data. She knew what that meant, and wasn't > happy about it, and decided not to install the app.
If my wife asked me that question, I would have asked her: Does the app have internet access? If the answer is no, I would have said "Don't worry about it then, since it cannot send out your contacts." If the answer had been "yes", I would have *liked* to ask: What website the data is going to go to? The problem is that I cannot ask that, so I would have to tell her to use her best judgment to install the app or not. Read the comments and see if anybody complains about it being a spyware. In other words, I don't have the information to make a really good decision and do the best you can. By the time we realize that the app is a spyware, her contacts list could have up uploaded to hackerden.ru > What does local network access on a cell phone even mean? And how many > normal users are even going to really understand what this means? The wording could be "Your own WIFI network." I would think in 2010, the vast majority of smart-phone users would understand that. Obviously, this would be a wifi only feature. People having Android devices for home use should because a lot more common by next year. > That said... I would like to be able to have a way to enforce that apps can > only get to domains they declare they need. In fact, we looked at doing it. > You know what? This is hard. It is hard to enforce in the platform (think > about domains vs. IP addresses and how the kernel is going to figure out > that a particular socket is valid for the app). It is hard to make > meaningful (think of the tricks you can make with safe looking domains that > redirect elsewhere). It is hard to present to *normal* users in a > meaningful way that they can make a good decision about. > > Of course if you figure out a good implementation of this, I'd be happy to > review the patch. I can imagine it's very hard to do. I was simply talking from what I would like to see as a user, while I put my developer hat away. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
