Google Android / Play Store Security Flaw folowup - Facebook, Maps and GPS
I would have one reaction to Google Play Store Security Flaw ( http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/16/google-asks-journalists-to-tone-down-story-of-massive-google-play-security-flaw ).
Did you also notice, that on Android (4+) you cannot use maps with GPS enabled AND use i.e. Facebook without GPS? And BTW facebook app is usually already installed on the device when you buy it.
The reason is that when you download app from Google Play Store, you have to agree that the app has certain permissions, otherwise you cannot download it.
In case of Facebook App and many many others, this is access to your location services (ie. GPS).
Now, you can turn off your GPS on the phone or tablet, but after that you cannot use i.e. maps app, which is kind of handy / essential when it comes to your smartphone.
When you turn the GPS on, so that you can use mapping apps, you are also enabling GPS to all other applications that have access to location services (i.e. Facebook, even running in background).
Facebook app can be running in background and still access your position, so you would have to kill the app running in background in order to deny access to GPS while you use Maps app.
There is no way how to say: Maps, use GPS, Facebook don't use it.
In iOS you can choose what app has access to your location, in Android 4+ you can't.
This seams to me like quite an important thing to know when you're about to buy Android device... what do you think?
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by robot0001
In iOS you can choose what app has access to your location, in Android 4+ you can't.
This seams to me like quite an important thing to know when you're about to buy Android device... what do you think?
Yep, that's important to many people and would be very handy.
So there are several third party apps that do allow setting up permissions per application. Some let you decide whether to return real, cleansed, or faked values per app for requests to access Contacts / Location / Call Log / etc.
However, they all require root access, AFAIK.
Quote:
Originally Posted by robot0001
Did you also notice, that on Android (4+) you cannot use maps with GPS enabled AND use i.e. Facebook without GPS? And BTW facebook app is usually already installed on the device when you buy it.
I've never seen Facebook pre-installed on any of my Android devices, I always had to install it separately. Which phone did you see it on? As far as the GPS is concerned you just turn it off when your not using it. In the notifications pane you can turn on/off what you want, it takes seconds. I would recommend using CM 10 as your ROM anyway instead of stock, there is an option to turn GPS off per app.