Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

As a long term Android user and a mostly happy one at that, let me just say that Android's permissions are terrible and basically not fit for purpose.

I'm going to ignore third party solutions that require root, because those aren't part of the equation for 95%+ of Android users.

Android should have three levels of permissions: Implied (i.e. all apps get these), explicit (at installation), and prompted (user is asked at runtime).

- Implied ("freebies"): internet connectivity, store data, get a unique device ID (per app?), store the app's own accounts within the accounts API.

- Explicit (installation): Run in background, use GPS, use the camera, use the microphone, etc.

- Prompted ("personal information"/"cost you money"): Access your cellphone number, access your contact list, access your calendar, access your email, read/send texts, make calls, etc.

Users in the current Android ecosystem learn to ignore permissions pretty quick as most are for trivial stuff (e.g. internet access, store data on the SD card, store an account, etc).

Worse still a lot of users will skip apps that ask for too many permissions which is bad for both the app developer AND users. Most developers want to offer functionality (e.g. share to contacts) but don't want to do so at the cost of losing users ("Why is this asking to see my contact list?").

Android needs to drop a bunch of "silly" permissions that have no inherent cost to the user. They're clearly created by an engineer who just wanted to slap permissions on every kind of API for no good reason. It benefits nobody.

They then need to take permissions which have a cost (either literally or to user privacy) and set them up rationally so they're either something you get when installing OR something you'll be prompted for.

Lastly Android needs to add a description field to the permissions manifest where the developer can put in a short explanation for why they need permission XYZ. Limit it to 128 characters if you wish. The app store can display these.

I install less apps on Android largely because many ask for too many permissions. If Google makes it really easy for me to protect my personal information (e.g. prompts) I'll literally spend more money on their store because I'll feel more safe to do so. As a developer I'll also offer more functionality to my apps as there is no permission "cost."

This is great stuff. I kind of wish they would hire you to run this. Another idea I've had would be for the user to be able to install an app without giving it the perms it "requires" (perhaps by unchecking some boxes in the dialog). Then apps would be responsible for handling a "no you can't see the contact DB" API response. Or they could crash I guess. The point is that users could effectively renegotiate with apps, e.g. "yes I'd like to use NFC to pay, no I don't want you to be able to record everything that's going on around my phone".

IIRC Cyanogenmod's privacy guard reenables a lost Android feature that basically does this. Its a main reason why I use cyanogenmod these days.

Agreed. When FB Messenger asks for my location, or my contact list, I just click "don't ask again" and "deny". And I get to ignore all the furor over the new Messenger permissions my friends are freaking out about.

Wnevets,

meanwhile Google Play Services made the Cyanogenmod privacy setting useless.

Any app can mask it’s access to your location, contacts, microphone etc. by using the Google Play Service instead.

It’s all or nothing again.

Try setting the Google Play Services access to “ask each time” and be surprised how many apps that don’t need your location, contacts.. try to spy on you.

Andreas

i completely agree. to avoid crashes the OS could return innocuous zeros, for example, the contacts has no entries, silence on the mic, zero for location, no connection on a network interface. To level the playing field, the vendor should be able to know i declined the request and not provide me the software, that's if their business model is based on advertising or data collection defeated by my choice.

Moreover, why not put a separate tab on the control center overlay that would display current permissions for running app as well as number of requests made that used that permission. If you drill in particular permission it could display history of requests for that particular API.

Having something like this would also allow for better audits. A separate app could show requests against a particular API by all apps as well as allow filtering. Other useful stats would be average number of requests per day per API per app and a graph of API calls by time of day. If nothing else this would allow to quickly identify rogue applications that make too many requests and drain battery.

On the topic of battery drain, I think that "allow to run in background" and "run as a service" would be a useful permissions as well. First one you would want to give to music players and to GPS applications, for additional control include time app allowed to run in the background before it is killed. Second permission would cover apps like IM and Facebook that are known to be tremendous battery hogs.

Totally agree with you here - Android's permissions model would be fine if only I could selectively refuse permissions to applications that ask for them, and have the application continue to operate but without the permissions I refused it. So that would mean my banking application wouldn't be able to take pictures of checks, if I refused it access to my camera, for example.

Actually, you'd want three settings:

Yes, No, and spoof. Otherwise far too many apps would just go "I won't work until you enable the settings I ask for" - and then we're right back at the current situation.

Close. Yes, and spoof.

It is none of the app's business if the "camera" it sees is actually just an animated GIF (in essence).

It is none of the app's business if the "location" information it receives says, Mountain View, California. Wow! Look how many customers live in California. :-P

In short, the app should not even get the yes/no data from the user.

That possibly works.

But at the same time, I have a feeling that there would be frameworks popping up all over the place for recognizing spoofed settings. Yes, you'd end up with the same thing with an explicit "no" option, but the segment of users choosing "spoof" would presumably be smaller, and as such presumably the gain of an app adding functionality to detect spoofing would be smaller.

Although I personally think that the best option is, given that Android has the app store, have it part of the verification process that unrelated functionality of an app must work when functions are disabled.

Yes, and Android's isn't the only app repo that could be doing more verification (reminds one of Windows Update and FTDI, no?). To be frank, however, adding additional required verification is a huge pain for everyone, so it's going to be rare.

To avoid the pain they could roll this out only to apps that declare themselves not to be assholes. I.e., an app could promise not to degrade ungracefully under limited perms, and in return it would never get spoofed data. (All other apps would get spoofed data whenever they access an API that a user had deselected.) If a non-asshole app were ever reported by a user and verified by Android devs to degrade in a user-hostile manner, it could just be placed in the asshole category permanently.

Since the spoofed data is an API, your proposed framework to "recognize spoofed settings" must solve the halting problem -- impossible.

The spoofing API actually has only one requirement -- keep the app from accessing real data.

I can't find the reference right now, but that feature was present in beta versions of Android 4.3 (?) and removed because it broke certain existing apps.

Called "App Ops" and here is an article about it (and its removal): http://pocketnow.com/2013/12/17/app-ops

I share the same feelings about overreaching app permissions. My solution would be similar, but deviate notably in that I'd prefer every app have a permissions menu where each permission can be toggled on/off. The permissions menu itself would only be enabled if Developer Options is enabled (via the 7 taps).

This would, of course, break certain actions within the app and would require disabling buttons in the app and/or displaying friendly errors about "This action requires access to your camera. See permissions etc...". Even then, people disabling permissions and 'breaking' the app by their own actions would probably generate some unjustifiably negative reviews on the Play store.

Not perfect, but a great way to reign in app permissions. My only control right now is to simply not install the app (or disable hardware like the radio when I run it).

I would argue that no permission should be "implied". For each example you list in that category, I can find an argument to not make it implied. For example: Many people are on plans with capped data per month and are therefore concerned about how much data an app uses. As such a user I would want to make sure apps like a flashlight app do not use internet connectivity at all. Likewise if you are concerned about privacy and want to know when an app connects to the internet and thereby automatically reveals your location, possibly usage pattern, etc.

Another example is when keyboard apps need internet connectivity, it's a no-no for me.

> I would argue that no permission should be "implied". For each example you list in that category, I can find an argument to not make it implied.

I'm sure you can. But ultimately it is losing battle.

When you turn something which 99.99% of normal apps require into a "permission" it isn't really a permission at all. Just an obstruction which teaches the users permissions can be safely ignored (i.e. stupid permissions hurt good permissions).

If a user ONLY gets a permissions pop-up when it actually matters they're far more likely to take it seriously than if they get it every time and 9 times out of 10, it is just nonsense (e.g. Reddit app needs internet access, store accounts, SD card write, etc).

> Likewise if you are concerned about privacy and want to know when an app connects to the internet and thereby automatically reveals your location, possibly usage pattern, etc.

Without getting boringly into the intricacies of Android's underbelly, even without the "internet" permission (which is now standard with higher API levels anyway), you can connect to the internet through other APIs and inform a server that you exist.

Literally an app with zero permissions on Android can make API calls which let a server know they're installed at that IP address.

The internet permission was just a good example to throw into the set because Google already moved in the direction of effectively removing it. Now they just need to do more permissions in a similar vein.

> When you turn something which 99.99% of normal apps...

I think you are confusing your personal use case with everybody's use case. What's a "normal app" anyway? Did you mean to say "apps I use on a daily basis"? Because of the 17 apps on my home screen, 6 do not have a functional requirement for internet connectivity. I bet for users in emerging markets this ratio might be even higher.

> If a user ONLY gets a permissions pop-up when it actually matters...

For most people, spending money is something that actually matters. Again, just because you don't have metered data, doesn't mean everyone else is in the same situation.

> Just an obstruction which teaches the users permissions can be safely ignored

Google manages to sort millions of search results by relevancy, I'm sure they can do the same for app permissions.

> What's a "normal app" anyway? Did you mean to say "apps I use on a daily basis"? Because of the 17 apps on my home screen, 6 do not have a functional requirement for internet connectivity. I bet for users in emerging markets this ratio might be even higher.

It sounds like you're agreeing with the GP that a normal app (11 of the 17 most used, for you) needs internet access?

> I think you are confusing your personal use case with everybody's use case.

But your "use case" isn't even really solved by permissions. It is solved by OS settings (e.g. turning off cellular data, using the data usage tracker/warning, etc).

> What's a "normal app" anyway? Did you mean to say "apps I use on a daily basis"?

No, I mean the majority of apps that exist already on the Play Store. Apps that require no data at all are the exception not the rule, apps that also don't use the accounts API, or store data to the SD card are exceedingly rare.

> I bet for users in emerging markets this ratio might be even higher.

Perhaps, but permissions don't solve this. If data isn't there then apps need to fall back to something else, that is up the developer to implement.

> For most people, spending money is something that actually matters. Again, just because you don't have metered data, doesn't mean everyone else is in the same situation.

Solved by the data usage tracker, not the internet permission.

> Google manages to sort millions of search results by relevancy, I'm sure they can do the same for app permissions.

They also manage to strip millions of search results of no relevance which is what they should do to permissions of no relevance.

> Without getting boringly into the intricacies of Android's underbelly, even without the "internet" permission (which is now standard with higher API levels anyway), you can connect to the internet through other APIs and inform a server that you exist.

At the risk of boring someone else, any more info on this? Is this true for the later versions of Android? (4.2+)

I found something similar to what you describe but for 2.x (and then, a very visible "exploit" - i.e. opening the web browser)

Logical thoughts. For some of mine (semi-recently elucidated to the FirefoxOS people as a volunteer contribution but yet to see much traction) check out https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=945047 especially https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8407268

Summary: More granular network permissions model, remove assumptions around specific link-layers that underpin existing mobile app security models, encourage additional link-layers.

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