[sevenproxies]

Device fingerprinting is a big boon to fraud prevention. The more data sources that can help uniquely identify a device the better. I know some fraud prevention companies require merchants to include an image (png), javascript and flash file on the checkout pages to profile a customer. Flash can access your microphone, camera and local storage (flash cookies).

Fraud is a big deal for Paypal, although I'm do not know if such permissions are needed in device fingerprinting on apps.

Interestingly from a privacy point of view, more granular permissions to device features might not necessary equate to greater anonymity. If most device users do not care or know about the privacy implications and accept the app's permission request, those who don't accept become the minority.