The Amazon App Store was, for most Android users who used it, mostly useful for the free app of the day. Full versions of games and apps such as Angry Birds (Seasons, Space and Star Wars II ad-free versions), Simon the Sorcerer, Plants vs. Zombies, Colin McRae Rally, Prince of Persia Classic, Five Nights at Freddy's, Tetris, Sonic CD, Sonic 2, Cubicle Golf, Monopoly, Cut the Rope and AVG AntiVirus PRO have all been featured for a day. However, Amazon have suddenly pulled the plug on the popular feature of their marketplace. So... why did they do it? Well, their explanation is that they have replaced it with a new marketplace app - Amazon Underground. Their explanation is that many "free" apps are, in fact, freemium. They've come up with a solution - apps marked with the "Actually Free" banner will net the developer a profit of $0.002 per minute played. This bill is picked up by Amazon, so it really is free to the consumer. ...or is it? Will this be ad-supported? Or worse, resell your data? Well, it's possible. The latest version of App Store did have some rather suspicious permissions, after all. As indeed does this app, such as: read phone status and identity receive text messages (SMS) send SMS messages take pictures and videos record audio approximate location (network-based) precise location (GPS and network-based) read your contacts modify or delete the contents of your SD card read the contents of your SD card add or remove accounts create accounts and set passwords find accounts on the device use accounts on the device Whilst some of those are fairly often seen, I still don't understand the need for a marketplace to send texts and take pictures! And I really don't understand why they want to control the flashlight. I haven't installed the app yet - let us know if you do. I've heard it is advertising other Amazon services and allows you to access them, too... plus it keeps reminding you how much you could have paid to play these games! http://phandroid.com/2015/08/26/amazon-underground-replaces-free-app-of-the-day/
So lots of other apps being assholes too, makes it okay? I understand the phone status, find/use accounts and sd card access (btw, we could use some finer granularity (i.e. the same app-level file permissione we have on internal memory) there imho), but none of the other stuff makes much sense. I'd rather have privacy than "free" apps, thankyouverymuch.
Nope. As I've said before, Google made things worse when they simplified things by grouping several categories together. Even before that, there were certain (commonly seen) permissions grouped together that had cause for concern from a privacy point of view. Phone status, for example, might be used to check that there's not a call so the game can be paused. Fair enough. However, it's always been grouped with the permission to read your IMEI, see who you're in a call with and what their number is. Amazon need to explain their reasons for using these permissions... but Google need to sort the loose grouping out, too. It only got worse when they regrouped everything, as some apps gained additional permissions (auto updated without consent) because they're grouped with a permission that was already present and could potentially do malicious things with them.
