Google, in an interesting comment released on their own
official pages, provides an update on the thorny issue of
data collection by the apps that we usually install on ours
devices. We're not talking about blatantly malicious apps, let's be clear, since
that's another problem. The question is different, since already from October 2018
Google imposed a number of limitations on the developers who made it
app asking, at installation, for more "permissions" than
what is actually necessary for the operation of the app itself.
To put it in an example: if we install an app that acts as a notepad,
why ask for access to calls and SMS? In the past many developers
have certainly exceeded in the request for access to many data present in the
devices, thus allowing data collection on the one hand
formally legal (we say "s" to everything when we install an app,
knowing that not providing authorization maybe then that same app will not
what it promises …), on the other hand it is completely superfluous for the correct
operation.
During 2019 the new strategy led to a downsizing in the
requests for access to calls and SMS of 98% of the apps on Play
Store. Read in another way, almost all the apps they demanded
access to calls and SMS without it being necessary, now they don't.
The 2% who requested it continue to do so because it is actually necessary to
correct functioning of the app itself.
We are talking about apps not malicious, just a little too much
"curious" in the past. Always Google claims to have stuck in the bud before
still being made available on the Play Store, well 790,000 apps
carried out with the primary intention of collecting data (therefore consider
malicious.) I am instead tens of thousands of apps blocked after
restrictions introduced as a result of the requirement to indicate whether an app or a
service aimed at minors or not.
Good news, in short. Of course, it should be borne in mind that Google itself ad
self-congratulating and surely there are still problems of this kind
related to other "permissions", but the intention is clearly clear, followed by
some facts, to work more and more in this direction.
