Phones and permissions

Agreed. My initial reaction to this article was that it was the recording and centralization of the IMEI number as an indirect mean of tracking phone users was that not legal (at least under the usual European personal data protection laws I am used to).
I find pointless to put the ability of spoofing the IMEI under scrutiny: I'd like that to be a basic right first, even for those who do not want to exercise it.
However, the first thing to examine would be the way such apps record user data...