On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 2:25 PM, sharedwd <[email protected]> wrote:
> Well, then I guess the Market is pretty much useless if users want any > kind of privacy. Every app out there wants every permission available > it seems. If I didn't install an app I wanted because it requires > permissions to private info, that pretty much means don't install ANY > apps from the Market. And that includes Google Maps, Twitter, and > everything else. Keep it in perspective: All Mac OS X/Linux/Windows apps can access all your information all the time. Therefore, although Android offers "only" coarse-grained control over what an app can access, that is still a vast improvement over the status quo. Second of all, Android can only provide the mechanism for privilege limitation and data sharing; it is up to developers to use those mechanisms well. As you report, many developers are not currently using them well. As users, we can pressure developers to justify and/or reduce the privilege their apps use. Just recently, I found three roughly-equivalent apps to perform a function I wanted. They each required different permissions; I installed the one that requires least privilege and emailed the developer of the other two about why I made my choice. The developer provided a semi-decent explanation for their use of many privileges, but he understood my point of view also. Anyway, Android-the-platform provides very good privilege-limitation mechanisms. Raising developer awareness is a separate (important) task.
