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Interesting. But does an app have to accept that you are blocking its desired permissions?
I would imagine you could write your app such that when stealContactInfo() returns FAIL, you can give the user a message "To use this app, enable default permissions".
I would imagine you could write your app such that when stealContactInfo() returns FAIL, you can give the user a message "To use this app, enable default permissions".
I imagine so, too. That's the problem. I think if an app demands certain permissions, it will probably back it up with refusing to do any work if it does not get the permission.
That would be the weakness of the system. But it is at least somewhat of an improvement.
I've already outlined the solution.
If only I had more free time. I'd like to make an app that sandboxes all your apps and replaces every bit of data they want (contacts, phone number, other install apps, location, etc.) with fake data that is unique to their sandbox. Then every so often reset the sandbox with different data. It would crush the spying effort.
The functions that apps call would work and report success. The content they send would simply be junk, auto-generated to look like real content. So apps could not coerce you into giving up data.
To be frank, I don't get excited about much in tech these days. I wouldn't let my by kids install the latest Minions app because it wanted to know my location. Now there is a choice. And yes, I know there were third party apps that did this but... do I really want to install an app with all those permissions. Looking forward to a future of installing and denying til it breaks.