App Permissions

So the other day I did something incredibly stupid on my phone. I started looking up app permissions. The idea came to me when I read a piece where someone was complaining about the contacts app on your phone syncing with some online service and syncing between all of your devices. The author said “What if I don’t want anyone to know that John Doe is one of my contacts?”

I kind of agree with him. I have constructed a simple HTML contacts list for my own use and when I get all of my contacts loaded I will be emptying out the app that syncs. If you are on my contacts I will soon be able to promise that you’ll be safe on my end.

This led me to wondering what other apps have some bizarre permissions. I noticed that the stock clock on my phone has full access to the internet. Why? The camera, the calendar, the text editor, sound recorder, and all the e-readers do to. But what blew my mind is that the keyboard had the same full internet access permission.

After some searching I have managed to find replacements for all of these, except for the calendar. I may have to build a calendar.

F-droid has this app called “Permissions Friendly App.” It scores each app and the higher the number the worse it is on permissions. For example my editor has a score of 101 and Prime Video has a score over 2700. The shocker to me is that the Tor Browser for Android has a score just over 404 points. Fennec (the Firefox rebrand) has a score of over 1700. Why the big difference. Brave is at 1308 for those interested.

Protecting yourself online is almost a fulltime job nowadays.