I have finally caved and joined the era of smart phone users.

I have an android, it’s bad ass and I love it!  I’m not a huge app person, I of course have the standards (IE every version of angry birds that there is) and a few choice others.  Mostly though I use my phone for it’s intended purpose: to talk and text and little else.  Mostly texting really.  Anyway, everyone once in a while I’ll stumble upon an app that interests me and the handy thing about having an android is that you can download stuff to your phone through your g-mail account.

Question is, how many of us really spend all that much time reading the fine print or in this case permissions for the apps that they choose?  I always take a quick glance and generally it’s the standard permissions that most apps ask for.  Nothing too un-reasonable or ridiculous in any case, if you have a smart phone then you know what I’m talking about.

Then I stumbled upon an app on the web that I thought I might download, that is until I actually took the time to read the permissions and changed my mind. Behold:

• HARDWARE CONTROLS:
  TAKE PICTURES AND VIDEOS (come again?)
  Allows application to take pictures and videos with the camera. This allows the application at any time to collect images the camera is seeing.  OK so you’re telling me that any picture I take with my phone, you have access to?  I think not!  Granted it’s not that I take the most interesting pictures with my phone but if I wanted to start rocking some naughty images that’s a whole other story…
  RECORD AUDIO
  Allows application to access the audio record path.
  CHANGE YOUR AUDIO SETTINGS
  Allows application to modify global audio settings such as volume and routing.
• YOUR LOCATION
  COARSE (NETWORK-BASED) LOCATION
  Access coarse location sources such as the cellular network database to determine an approximate device location, where available. Malicious applications can use this to determine approximately where you are.
  FINE (GPS) LOCATION
  Access fine location sources such as the Global Positioning System on the device, where available. Malicious applications can use this to determine where you are, and may consume additional battery power.
• YOUR MESSAGES
  RECEIVE SMS
  Allows application to receive and process SMS messages. Malicious applications may monitor your messages or delete them without showing them to you.
• NETWORK COMMUNICATION
  FULL INTERNET ACCESS
  Allows an application to create network sockets.
• YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
  READ CONTACT DATA
  Allows an application to read all of the contact (address) data stored on your device. Malicious applications can use this to send your data to other people.
  WRITE CONTACT DATA
  Allows an application to modify the contact (address) data stored on your device. Malicious applications can use this to erase or modify your contact data.
• PHONE CALLS
  READ PHONE STATE AND IDENTITY
  Allows the application to access the phone features of the device. An application with this permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the like.
• STORAGE
  MODIFY/DELETE USB STORAGE CONTENTS MODIFY/DELETE SD CARD CONTENTS
  Allows an application to write to the USB storage. Allows an application to write to the SD card.  <This one is pretty typical of most apps, because of the micro SD card that’s installed in your phone.
  However some of these permissions are seriously messed up.  Why on earth would you need access to my pictures, my contacts and a bunch of other shit NOT relevant to the app in question?  To me that seems far more invasive then it needs to be, so that being said?
  No thank you! I don’t fucking think so!