Google, an American multinational technology company, announced on Monday that it will, in the next couple of days, begin to remove Play Store applications that ask for SMS and call log permission. Predominantly, the company wants to limit the SMS and Call Log permissions on Android to messaging and dialing apps, respectively. But the broader goal is to prevent data leaks. “Our new policy is designed to ensure that apps asking for these permissions need full and ongoing access to the sensitive data in order to accomplish the app’s primary use case and that users will understand why this data would be required for the app to function,” the firm said in a blog this week. The Alphabet Inc. unit has since October last year, been contacting Android developers via email and giving them 90 days to make their apps compliant, or request an exception. A compliance extension gives developers until March 9, to work on updates. Android developers are those developers who create applications that run on Android operating system. This means all the apps downloaded on Play Store are created by Android developers. The company shared some progress on compliance efforts, including how in recent months it expanded the list of approved use cases following developer feedback. Google says tens of thousands of developers have either updated apps to follow the new policy or requested an extension. It also notes that its own apps are subject to the same criteria. During the review process, the company will consider the likelihood that an average user would understand why this type of app needs full access to the data, user benefit of the feature, and the importance of the permission relative to the core functionality of the app. It will also consider risks presented by all apps with this use case having access to this sensitive data, and availability of more narrow alternatives for enabling the feature. The Silicon Valley-based firms indicated that tens of thousands of developers have already resubmitted their apps to support the new policy. By Julius Bizimungu Google, an American multinational technology company, announced on Monday that it will, in the next couple of days, begin to remove Play Store applications that ask for SMS and call log permission. Predominantly, the company wants to limit the SMS and Call Log permissions on Android to messaging and dialing apps, respectively. But the bigger aim is to prevent data leaks. “Our new policy is designed to ensure that apps asking for these permissions need full and ongoing access to the sensitive data in order to accomplish the app’s primary use case and that users will understand why this data would be required for the app to function,” the firm said in a blog this week. The Alphabet Inc. unit has since October last year been contacting Android developers via email and giving them 90 days to make their apps compliant, or request an exception. A compliance extension gives developers until March 9 to work on updates. Android developers are those developers who create applications that run on Android operating system. This means all the apps downloaded on Play Store are created by Android developers. The company shared some progress on compliance efforts, including how in recent months it expanded the list of approved use cases following developer feedback. Google says tens of thousands of developers have either updated apps to follow the new policy or requested an extension. It also notes that its own apps are subject to the same criteria. During the review process, the company will consider the likelihood that an average user would understand why this type of app needs full access to the data, user benefit of the feature, and the importance of the permission relative to the core functionality of the app. It will also consider risks presented by all apps with this use case having access to this sensitive data, and availability of more narrow alternatives for enabling the feature. The Silicon Valley-based firms indicated that tens of thousands of developers have already resubmitted their apps to support the new policy. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
