Hacker News Reader

Comment by liquidise | Hacker News Reader

Multiple comments here parroting the "this is a non-issue on Lollipop or later" defense. Per Android's own statistics [1], that leaves 60% of users vulnerable to excessive permissions.

1: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

View on HN

Regardless of whether it's a non-issue on Lollipop (or later) or not, it exhibits the intent of Uber.

And google is no less: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-ch...

No, it really doesn't. It's a fundamental flaw in the earlier Android permissions model that it requests so much.

Uber doesn't try to pull anything like this on iOS.

iOS applications are moderated and Apple might not want Uber to collect too much information on their users.

To be fair, there is zero ability (outside of undocumented and forbidden private APIs) for an iOS app to even request access to browsing history, bookmarks, or app history.

Actually that's backwards. Android moved to the new permission system (fewer perm groups, runtime user permission) to be more like iOS. It used to be that all permissions were granted at install time, which made apps much more likely to ask for onerous permissions because the user is unlikely to read the list or turn back.

It's likely they don't try this on iOS because iOS simply doesn't have the APIs to do this under any permission. It's a philosophical platform difference about what the user should be able to allow apps to do.

And what intent are you implying? Is it not possible that they request these permissions to improve the functionality of the application, and do not in fact actively spy on their users?

I'm sure that you'd be happy to provide them access to your house in order to "improve the functionality of the application".

Luckily, the real world is not modeled after Android's legacy permissions system. Your actual point?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com