From: Jeff@invalid.invalid
On 12/02/2026 00:31, Maria Sophia wrote:
> Jeff Layman wrote:
>>> Still, it's a great datapoint where the next question I'd ask of you and
>>> anyone who has any apps with read permission to their contacts, is are you
>>> surprised at the number which you found out that "could" read contacts?
>>
>> I'm never surprised by anything in Android which compromises privacy.
>> It's interesting to compare the approach to giving information about an
>> app in the Google Play Store and F-Droid. The latter clearly has a
>> section entitled "Permissions" which show what the app will be able to
>> access (and perhaps modify). Not so the Play Store, which has a vague
>> section called "Data Safety".
>
>
> Hi Jeff,
>
> I agree with anyone who makes a logically sentient statement, where I agree
> that the Google Play Store is inferior to F-Droid in listing pernicious
> permissions, and, let's be clear, Aurora's replacement to the Google Play
> Store client at least lists which apps incorporate GSF which is helpful.
>
> There's a reason I uninstalled the Google Play Store app years ago. :)
>
> And I have no problem installing apps from the Google Play Store repo
> without a Google Account on the phone, so it works better w/o it.
>
> To your very point, on F-Droid�s website or within the client, each app�s
> page lists the permissions it requests.
>
> For example, the open-source
> Contacts app explicitly states it requires permission to �read your
> contacts.
>
> Interestingly, your comment made me dig a bit, which is refreshsing after
> having responded to the trolls attempting to derail this discussion because
> they can't add any value, it turns out that F-Droid hosts an app called
> Permissions Summary which scans your installed apps and lists which ones
> have access to sensitive permissions, including Contacts (read/write).
> However, it only shows user-installed apps with �dangerous� permissions
> (like contacts, camera, microphone, location, etc.) that require explicit
> runtime approval.
>
>
> I just downloaded it but it will take a while to test it for the team.
>
> Name: com.vayunmathur.contacts_6.apk
> Size: 24131675 bytes (23 MiB)
> SHA256: A348428B9C0E8526C021C49366B44563C6851FCEE8480C9046B516F466EE75C6
>
> Drat. It crashes every time. Can you (or someone also helpful) test it
> for the team? It seems like a decent app to get the "real" permissions.
I installed that Contacts app (Vayun Mather) but on running it crashes
for me too with an error message: "Contacts keeps stopping".
I also installed Permissions Summary and ran that, but it seems to give
less info than my phone Settings info which I posted earlier. For
example, it reports only FairEmail as accessing Contacts.
I've uninstalled both.
> In addition, you have Muntashirakon App Manager, which everyone on this
> newsgroup is well aware of as the best of the best of FOSS Android apps.
>
> For any installed app, AM shows:
> Requested permissions
> Granted vs. denied
> Whether the permission is runtime, dangerous, signature, or special
> Whether it was auto-granted by the system
> So we can instantly see if an app has:
> android.permission.READ_CONTACTS
> android.permission.WRITE_CONTACTS
> android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS (related to contacts
> But of course, that's on an app-by-app basis, so it's good, but manual.
Yes, I had looked at what it reports for permissions, but going through
hundreds of apps manually was not feasible.
--
Jeff
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
