On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 10:20 PM, Lucas Adamski <[email protected]> wrote: > There have been some concerns raised recently from Jonas and Doug Turner > regarding the WebSMS model, regarding the ability for Privileged apps (The > App Type Formerly Known As Trusted, ie. TATFKAT) to send SMS/MMS at all. > > Per our current schedule, realistically we can't implement the suggested > mitigations such as warning on premium numbers for 1.0. Instead, we could > disallow access to SMS/MMS for Privileged apps entirely. > > Keep in mind that per the model Privileged apps require review and approval, > plus the user is prompted before the app has any access to the SMS API > (additionally, we expect that any app requesting this API would also provide > an "intended usage", which would in turn be reviewed and approved). > > I personally think this risk is reasonable and (unlike other platforms) users > who don't think a given app needs SMS access will simply deny the permission > prompt. > > Thoughts?
What concerns me here is the very high incentives people have for abusing the SMS API. Setting up a pay-for SMS number and then tricking users into sending that number lots of messages can make you lots of money in relatively small amounts of time. The value is also *relatively* low. I definitely agree it would be cool if people could write apps to replace the SMS app and create things like integrated communication centers. But I don't think that we'll make it that much of a less attractive platform for users if we don't have those types of apps in the initial version. I also believe Adrienne had done some analysis of Apps in the Android app store which use SMS and found that a scarily large percentage used it for non-great purposes. So I'd prefer to keep things simple in the initial release and simply not expose SMS, and instead focus finding secure ways of exposing it in a later release. / Jonas _______________________________________________ dev-webapps mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps
