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Comment by sjwright | Hacker News Reader

> Android actually gives you control over security and privacy by telling you what your app API's get access to.

Simply mentioning a laundry list of the myriad things an app will be permitted to do is NOT giving me control over security and privacy.

http://cdn.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/03-Angry...

That's not control, that's bullshit.

Apple got permissions right long before Android did: no third party apps have intrinsic permission to use the microphone, address book, location etc until the OS asks me on behalf of that app. And I can always say no if I want.

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That hasn't been the case since android 6 (they're on android 8 now). That picture looks like this now:

https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ximg_56...

It works just the same as iOS, where the first time an app wants to use your location/etc it asks android, which shows a prompt:

https://uit.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/images/2016/08/...

And can be revoked as well:

https://img.gadgethacks.com/img/81/78/63633813117897/0/snapc...

iOS is different in a subtle way: once you grant an application permission to use location/microphone, it will show a banner if a background app is using it.

Once you grant e.g. permission to access the microphone to an Android app, it can do so at any time without you noticing. Until you manually go to the settings and revoke the permission, that is.

This happens only if the permission is for ‘while using the app’. This permission means that part of the app needs to be visible on screen and if it’s not, the banner will show.

If you change the permission to ‘always’ the banner won’t show.

That only applies for location access. Even then, you'll see an arrow in the status bar and there's a page in the settings that lets you see which applications are actually accessing your location in the background, and how often.

Mic recording, on the other hand, is always user-initiated and very explicit.

I've heard right here on HN that even in the newer versions of Android, some (prominent?) apps don't work well if you don't grant them the unnecessary (from the user's point of view) permissions. I haven't seen something like that on iOS so far.

With the pace of Android adoption, the new permission model isn't even present on half the devices that have been tracked on the Android Dashboard. [1] Versions 6 and 7 combined are at 48% adoption as of this moment, according to this dashboard.

On the iOS side, the granular permissions model has been around since the last seven years or longer, IIRC. And iOS devices have a much higher rate of new OS adoption, which means almost every iOS device currently in use has the same permission model for a lot longer.

[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html#Pl...

> no third party apps have intrinsic permission to use the microphone, address book, location etc until the OS asks me on behalf of that app.

Actually some of these permissions need to be requested by the first-party apps as well. You can deny the built-in Maps application location updates.

Yeah, but there are things like some game can backdoor the clipboard while submitting a score or whatever.

I like to know if an app has access to the network. If it does, don't install unless I trust the parent company.

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