yep, 427% from what: sure sign of biased 'journalism' trying to use partial data in a manipulative way...
I would just forget the handful of obvious unnecessary apps out there requesting access to private data
Let's start with Google and Market in the first place:
phones come preloaded with apps and games that are either not useful for
most (like games that come with it, or apps where way better ones are available
on Market), and, here is the thing: cannot be removed!
common to all these: collecting an excessive set of privacy data
excessive in the sense of not necessary for the function of the program itself
now, marketing firms want to get a grip on this nice data source that the phone owner
cannot defend against
looking at 'Twidroid', it is an 'OK' app for twitter, but
1) there are better ones on Market
2) who needs that when I can go to twitter.com directly using the browser and have the full feature set available "from the hose's mouth"
that app already requests privacy data
comes a clever marketing firm Über something:
buys that precious data source
here comes the hammer:
wants to 'update' to their 'new' version which requests way more invasive
access to privacy data than the original (that was the mo for the move!)
the android owner cannot remove this thing
the Über-guys want of course to update the existing old one on the phones
with theirs, so they get the additional data from all phones, that's the reason for the investment in the first place
user does notices the additional privs and does not update
user sets auto-update to 'no' (box unchecked)
oh, surprise, over night the thing did update!
what, the auto update box did check itself!
remove update (too late, the data has already been captured...)
set to auto-update off
same old
Forget the handful of obviously useless examples of crapware who's only goal is to collect phone user's data
Google themselves, through lucrative agreements, is the biggest violater
- force feeding collecting apps
- equipping apps with overrides of user's wishes (resetting the auto update to 'on' so over night while nobody seems to be watching the app updates and collects the precious set of confirmed data)
As long as there are apps that come with a phone that cannot be removed,
making an exception of course of the SW that is necessary to operate the
phone on the provider's network,
there is not protection of privacy!
Let's start with the biggest malware and spyware criminals first, who force feed spyware to 250+ Million phones
then maybe talk about some idiots who want to get on the bandwagon exploiting dumb or greedy people...
Mike N