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Phones and permissionsPhones and permissionsPosted Jun 3, 2011 14:14 UTC (Fri) by PhracturedBlue (subscriber, #4193)Parent article: Phones and permissions
I won't comment on the IMEI specifically, but the general question of what the App owners are 'owed' seems to be the same question as what a web-page owner is 'owed'. Are they owed the right to display ads on my computer in exchange for the content? There are tools like ABP to stop displaying ads on web-pages, and while they are somewhat controversial, they are heavily owned. If I decide it is ok by my beliefs to use ABP, then I'm likely to feel that I should be able to do the same thing on my phone (and that would go for all personal info). I'm not sure how it fits into CyanogenMod specifically though. Firefox doesn't provide ad-blocking, I need a 3rd party plugin for that. I don't begrudge CyanogenMod the same decision, but it would be nice if we could get the same functionality from a 3rd-party source.
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Phones and permissions Posted Jun 4, 2011 2:57 UTC (Sat) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]
I suppose I am pretty simple minded here. I think it is quite proper for the user to deny internet access to apps which don't seem (to the user) to need it, and if the app really does need it (map program!), it crashes or maybe recognizes the missing permission and exits with a message saying why. If the app only wants it for ads, and the app dev wants to not run without it, that is perfectly fine with me.
None of this seems like a very big problem to me. Users should be able to deny any permissions. App devs should be able to choose any reaction from crashing to detecting and explaining why the permission is needed.
As an aside, I wondered right from the start why Google didn't allow users to tailor permissions for apps.
Phones and permissions Posted Jun 4, 2011 11:36 UTC (Sat) by ScottMinster (subscriber, #67541) [Link]
Applications that run on my computer are essentially extensions of me. If Firefox does something, it is doing it on my behalf. If an application does something I do not authorize or against my interests, it is buggy.
It is quite strange to me that we are starting to think of mobile phone applications not as extensions of the user running that app, but as an extension of the person who wrote the app. Perhaps it's because we've become used to website apps, or because mobile phones (at least in the US) are often controlled by 3rd parties (the phone network operators) so we don't expect users to be in control. But I think this is a dangerous way of thinking, one that runs contrary to FOSS ideals. The user should absolutely be empowered to disable or fake whatever information the application can see, especially if the app is user-hostile.
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