Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rplnt 4198 days ago
It should need a permission in my opinion. Why should a calculator (for example) know if there is incoming call?

But this case should be handled by a permission in dialer (or whatever handles incoming calls) - something like "allow to broadcast mute to all other applications".
2 comments
tripzilch 4197 days ago
> Why should a calculator (for example) know if there is incoming call?

Because it's running on a phone.

Remember those cool requestAnimationFrame side-channel timing attacks. I think it'd be pretty hard to hide at least certain things like these from an app if it really wanted to know. In this case I think it's pretty fair to just give it an API call for it.

link
MichaelGG 4197 days ago
Why shouldn't it? It's on a phone; it's part of basic usability. And the cure in Google's case is far, far worse. Give them access to your IMEI and phone numbers in and out. I know assume incompetence over maliciousness, but this stretches belief. Especially combined with the rest of Google's little tricks.
link
marcosdumay 4197 days ago
> I know assume incompetence over maliciousness, but this stretches belief.

It's worse than that. Android had a saner permission interface, with a separated permission just for detecting if the phone is ringing. Google "updated" it to the current format alledging the previous one was too confusing.

link