As far as the permission to tap into the location of the phone or using your internet service your talking about fairly core needs of apps. It seems rather silly to complain that your twitter app is opening up internet connections. At the very least the selected sections of the article you have linked are more geared to causing fear, uncertainty and doubt then they are to a healthy discussion seen in the article itself.
You are also cropping up against the difference between curated (iOS) and uncurated app stores and the apps they "sell" (be it free or for a cost). Apple for the iOS platform attempts to verify an App is doing what it says it is doing and accessing data that it should, giving you the opportunity to accept or reject requests for information access (contacts, location etc). Apps that do not do what they say they do are rejected from the store, apps that use api's that they shouldn't also rejected and if it uses data that it shouldn't those are rejected as well (lots of documentation on this available). The Android store has very minimal protections of this type thus the "uncurated" title given to their store. If I was going to give any recommendation for anyone running an Android phone it would be be very careful of the app you download because it can be allowed access to any data on your phone. The same warning you would give anyone using a computer in the wild. What has been less clear is if the app is required to actually tell you what data it is accessing or if it can bury that "agreement/notice" in a terms of service that you won't read allowing you to agree to things you would not normally. -Brian On Jul 1, 2010, at 3:55 AM, Chris Penn wrote: > "SMobile analyzed metadata from almost 49,000 Android Market apps -- > roughly 68 percent of all the apps available for download from the > online store. > > More than 34,600 apps analyzed tried to get permission to open network > sockets by tapping the "Internet" service, SMobile found. > > Another 12,000 apps analyzed requested permission to tap data from the > "Access_Coarse_Location" service. This lets an app access the user's > cellphone ID or WiFi location." > > Ref: > http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/products/70278.html?wlc=1277981251 > > I wonder how this compares to the IPhone. > > I cannot say for sure because I do not own an Android phone but my > guess is that these apps are not (GPLv) Open Source. > > Chris... > > > > -- > "As we open our newspapers or watch our television screens, we seem to > be continually assaulted by the fruits of Mankind's stupidity." > -Roger Penrose > _______________________________________________ > LinuxUsers mailing list > LinuxUsers@socallinux.org > http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers _______________________________________________ LinuxUsers mailing list LinuxUsers@socallinux.org http://socallinux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxusers
