On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Jonas Sicking <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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.
>

That's not exactly what our data shows; it's not that most apps that
request SMS are malware, but rather that most apps that are malware request
SMS.  However, I would agree that the value added by SMS is low but the
risk is high.  Here's the data I've got:

   - 2.934% of Android apps request the SEND_SMS permission.
   - By our estimation (manual review of apps), only 0.8% of all apps need
   the permission; the remainder could use a built-in SMS widget like in iOS
   without any loss of functionality.
   - 73% of malware requests this permission.  I believe this % has
   increased since I measured it last year.
   - The privilege ranks in the top 5 most concerning to users (because of
   its ability to spend their money.
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