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Comment by kylec | Hacker News Reader

I've never seen an app ask for the same permission more than once. I'm pretty sure that if the user declines it the first time, all subsequent times will be automatically declined without prompting the user.

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Facebook Messenger does it every time you go to the App, it's very annoying. It definitely makes me use it less. I don't think Apps should be aware if they have had permissions denied, functions should just quietly return nothing/false data.

Example: http://i.imgur.com/S4MmKo3.png

This isn't the iOS prompt, however, which can only appear once.

Google Location Services does it every time you turn on GPS on a Kitkat android phone, if you've turned their location services permission off.

Older versions of Messenger even complained if you allowed it to send push notifications, but disabled the notification sound.

That's my point. Today, if you deny a permission, you don't expect to be asked about it again. However, if this pattern of using your own dialog before the iOS dialog takes hold, I could see it being abused. The developer could continue to show their dialog as often as they'd like. Only if you said yes, would they proceed to show you the iOS dialog.

It kind of reminds me of the story I read somewhere where app developers were showing their own dialog asking you to rate their app. Only if you chose a high rating would they actually forward you to the respective app store to actually leave a review/rating. If you gave a poor rating, they would simply "eat" the response without sending you to the store.

> It kind of reminds me of the story I read somewhere where app developers were showing their own dialog asking you to rate their app. Only if you chose a high rating would they actually forward you to the respective app store to actually leave a review/rating. If you gave a poor rating, they would simply "eat" the response without sending you to the store.

A notable recent occurrence of this was Dungeon Keeper:

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/02/07/dungeon-keeper-android-mak...

I'm fortunate enough to understand (I think!) what apps are doing; I've played a few games that ask for ratings in return for in-game bonuses, and I usually click the button that takes me to the app store, don't rate anything and jump back into the game.

With the double dialog approach the first dialog could repeatedly nag. They'd have to know to accept the first dialog and decline the second, and even then the first dialog would have to be explicitly programmed to stop nagging if the permissions are denied. For example, Google Maps on iOS tells me I've denied it location access every single time I open it.

Any specific reason to not allow a navigation app to have location access? Without the current location, you'd have to enter the current location manually.

I feel like on HN I could convincingly pretend it's something to do with distrusting Google with my data. In reality it's user incompetence.

Back in iOS6 I added a passcode to changing location service permissions on a whim of security. I promptly forgot it. Upgrading to iOS7 has added extra security measures that makes it impossible to extract the passcode from backups :(

Google Maps on the iPad is just a mapping facility for me and not a navigational tool.

I share the same frustration and instead deleted the app and used the website instead. Google does not need to know my home location.

The same app also asks me to logon with my Google account - persistently. There is no option to say 'stop fucking asking'. The Google Maps for iOS team is obviously a bunch of brogrammers without kids, cos if they weren't they'd realise that a common use case for an iPad is a family shared device. Hence, I don't want to login with my account, and I don't really want anyone else from my family to either.

To annoy me further the app already knows my google account name. How? I thought these iOS apps were sandboxed?

Sorry rant over. It pisses me off that I have to make a decision between privacy and convenience. Such is life.

http://www.dailydot.com/technology/google-sneaky-change-for-...

Multiple apps published on a single ios dev account can optionally be configured with a shared keychain, that's probably how they pick up your account info.

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