The analyst told what smartphone requests you need to refuse

MOSCOW, 18 Sep — PRIME. When installing applications on a smartphone, users often face the question of whether to give them the requested permissions. The main recommendation is simple: if the tasks of the application obviously do not require access to the camera, microphone, files, contacts, and so on, you do not need to give it, Tatyana Lynova, an analyst at the Angara Security operational monitoring group, told Prime.

She urged common sense. So, for example, that the calculator certainly does not need a camera. However, there are certain subtleties, the expert noted.

“Sometimes seemingly unnecessary permissions may be necessary for the correct operation of non-obvious or yet inaccessible / unexplored functions for the user. For example, a translator may need access to the camera to “scan” text from paper, and access to contacts to send the result of the translation. Permissions, therefore, may be required, but they are not necessary to perform the main task – the translation of the text, in this case, ”Lynova explained.

The expert advised to carefully study the description of the application (the possibilities of its functionality) in order to determine the criticality of certain permissions. Importantly, the same applies to application updates, as additional requirements may be imposed on improvements.

“The source of the installation (the official store or not) and the trust in the developer matter here,” Lynova summed up.