> Many of the most popular utility apps ask for very intrusive permissions
At least that is getting rectified, little by little. Apparently 4.3 introduced a tool called "Apps Ops", which brings some of the fine-grained permission control seen in Symbian (where it was actually possible to select which permissions to grant) to Android. [1]
Once the power users learn to make most of this tool, the app developers will have no choice but to learn to cope with their apps getting too onerous permissions yanked from under their feet. Which, to me, is a very good thing indeed. It gives the developers one more avenue to compete in - make your app too nosy and you risk getting sidelined by an upstart clone that behaves better with user privacy.
At least that is getting rectified, little by little. Apparently 4.3 introduced a tool called "Apps Ops", which brings some of the fine-grained permission control seen in Symbian (where it was actually possible to select which permissions to grant) to Android. [1]
Once the power users learn to make most of this tool, the app developers will have no choice but to learn to cope with their apps getting too onerous permissions yanked from under their feet. Which, to me, is a very good thing indeed. It gives the developers one more avenue to compete in - make your app too nosy and you risk getting sidelined by an upstart clone that behaves better with user privacy.
[1]: http://www.phonearena.com/news/A-hidden-Android-4.3-feature-...