From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch
Recently, I almost downloaded an app from the Google Play Store. It wanted me to grant the following permissions:
Network communication
full network access
view Wi-Fi connections
view network connections
add or modify calendar events and send email to guests without owners’ knowledge
read phone status and identity
modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
pair with Bluetooth devices
find accounts on the device
test access to protected storage
prevent device from sleeping
expand/collapse status bar
Did you carefully read that permissions list? Do you think that an app that can change your calender and send email without telling you must be an awesome program? You would probably think that it’s a utility for managing your contact list, your important documents, or maybe a super schedule manager.
You’d be wrong. Those permissions are for the Amazon Audible book reader app. I stumbled on it by accident when I was searching for a book that I wanted to read that the library didn’t have. Out of all the book sites: e-book, hardcover and paperback, Audible was the cheapest. I wonder if the price was so low because Amazon thought they could secretly mine my contacts and sell more stuff to people on that list?
I’d check the Amazon Appstore to see if the permissions are the same, but I can’t. A month or ago, I removed it from all of my devices. Back in March of 2011 when I installed it, the Appstore seemed like a real good deal. There was a free paid app every day and many of them were really good ones. The Swipe Keyboard, Tune In Radio and Documents to Go are just a few that come to my mind. There were also many good games that you could download an play without the advertisements.
I don’t know if it was always the policy, but about a half year ago, a lot of my “free” apps wouldn’t open. I would get an error message telling me that I had to be logged in to the Amazon Appstore to use the program. Of course, it would always happen at the most inconvenient times. Oh well, I don’t have that problem anymore.
It’s probably my imagination, but my Android devices seem to be a little faster since I deleted the Amazon Appstore and all of the apps that I downloaded. Maybe the faster speed will give me more time to read that book I purchased from the Google Play Store.