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Taking advantage of end user provided permissions seems to be the norm instead of the exception.

A few scandals have risen because of it. I remember a popular "free" calculator app that was sending GPS data.

Oddly, most people don't seem to care. They'd rather give up their entire picture collection than spend $2 on a permissions restricted app.

Having more fine-grained restrictions than we already do won't solve the problem. Most people will simply accept the default "give this application permissions to do everything" right out of the gate. I'd be surprised if even close to 5% of the people on facebook have reviewed the applications they've given permission to in the last 12 months.




Be wary of confirmation bias.

How many stories of the form "User-provided permissions used responsibly, nothing interesting to report" do you expect to see in the news?


I would read the shiznit out of that article.




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