Here‘s one of the reasons I almost never use it, despite having multiple accounts. And I never, ever use it on my phone. I have plenty of ways of communicating with people without this kind of crap.
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Here‘s one of the reasons I almost never use it, despite having multiple accounts. And I never, ever use it on my phone. I have plenty of ways of communicating with people without this kind of crap.
Comments are closed.
That article is rather panic-stricken. Many of the permissions it needs are things it needs to actually work. Oh noes, this app requires “send SMS” permissions to be able to send text messages!
I mean, fb’s one big privacy invasion in general, but this app doesn’t appear to be anything worse than the app.
In the comments there’s people who say they’ve written apps that do similar things and require similar positions.
The fundamental problem is Android’s ‘all or nothing’ approach to permissions. Either you give Facebook almost total access to your device, or you can’t even install the app. A sane OS would allow you to block individual permissions, to only allow the Facebook app to do those things you really want it to do.
This is why I’m still running a version from months ago, when they began demanding permission to do everything. If they ever block that, I’ll go back to using the web site instead.
And, no, I sure as heck don’t want it sending text messages when I’m somewhere on the other side of the world and will be charged who knows what to do so.
Edward, do you think it’s likely to do that? I certainly don’t.
I mean, I understand and agree with the concern in general but I’m just not really worried that Zuckerberg’s going to try to gouge a few bucks off my via my phone bill.
According to the Daily Caller, this is an Android-only issue because of how Android structures it’s permissions; iOS has a much more fine-grained permissions structure. I have no first-hand knowledge on Android though (iOS FTW!) so YMMV…
Although I should also add that the Facebooks can die in a fire as far as I’m concerned.
Android briefly had something similar, but Google removed it in the next OS release.
As you say, Apple give you control over app permissions, Blackberry do, and Windows appears to. Android appears to be the only mobile OS that hands all your information over to app developers. It’s a huge flaw in the operating system, enough that my next tablet won’t be Android unless they fix it.
You see it as a flaw, Google sees it as part of their strategy to rule the world 🙂
I’m guessing it’s somehow related to increasing their advertising revenue, but they won’t be getting much of that if people abandon Android because they’re sick of every app asking for every possible permission. It also makes Android a non-starter for use in any company even remotely concerned about security… who knows what apps are installed on that Android device, and what they might do?
I bailed out of Facebook a couple of years ago. I don’t need it and so I don’t feel like taking the risk with what Facebook does.
I still use facebook to keep track of college buddies and my children. But that world is very small, I don’t post much of anything their, and I certainly don’t need a mobile app to stay up with it.
At one time, I thought it would be great to store important family photos on facebook, so no personal catastrophe would destroy them. I quickly realized there were better ways to mitigate that risk.