{"id":260,"date":"2010-10-27T10:17:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T08:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/?p=260"},"modified":"2012-08-31T09:22:54","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T08:22:54","slug":"android-central-fail-slice-slice-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/?p=260","title":{"rendered":"Android Central Fail: Slice Slice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bestandroidappsreview.com\/2010\/10\/top-android-game-slice-slice-puzzle.html\">Best Android Apps Review<\/a> aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t doing their job as reviewers properly. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve complained before about not calling Android developers out for requiring invasive permissions without due cause for their apps.<\/p>\n<p>When I spot them I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to start naming and shaming both the app and the review that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t note it.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Top Android Game: Slice Slice<\/p>\n<p>Slice Slice is a challenging Android game where you must slice different shapes into a specific number of equal area units.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Great. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see what permissions it needs to be able to do this.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Your location: course (network-based) location, fine (GPS) location<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Network communication: full Internet access<\/li>\n<li>Storage: modify\/delete SD card contents<\/li>\n<li><strong>Phone calls: read phone state and identity<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>System tools: prevent phone from sleeping, <strong>retrieve running applications<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Network communication: view network state<\/li>\n<li>Hardware controls: control vibrator<\/li>\n<li>System tools: <strong>kill background processes<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve highlighted in bold the permissions that a game like this <em>does not need<\/em>. Combined with full network access, the ability to read a unique identifier, and know your location (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153fine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d location? For a game? What possible justification is there for a game to know where I am on the planet to the nearest 5m, let alone the nearest cell tower?) is scary.<\/p>\n<p>Horribly suspicious is the permission to retrieve a list of running applications and to kill them.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not entirely happy about the SD card access. That might be Android\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fault though. Each app should be able to access its own secure storage area, isolated from all other apps. That storage area might be on the SD card. That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean I want random apps to be able to crawl around through every file on the card. What is to stop it searching for any document file it finds and uploading it with its full network access?<\/p>\n<p>Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t install applications that do this. You are inviting people to steal your identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Best Android Apps Review aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t doing their job as reviewers properly. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve complained before about not calling Android developers out for requiring invasive permissions without due cause for their apps. When I spot them I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to start naming and shaming both the app and the review that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t note it. Top Android Game: Slice\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/?p=260\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[9,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fussylogic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}