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Everyone knows all the apps on your phone

(peabee.substack.com)
1192 points gniting | 8 comments | 29 Mar 25 21:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.471s | source | bottom
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andsoitis ◴[30 Mar 25 00:11 UTC] No.43519910[source]▶
> everyone knows all the alls on your phone

On Android phones. iPhone doesn’t have this privacy deficiency.

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WuxiFingerHold ◴[30 Mar 25 05:21 UTC] No.43521565[source]▶
iPhones are less of a privacy nightmare.

One of the biggest incentives for creating apps is to scrape all kind of data from the users. Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts. And how many actually need your contacts to function. That's why I'm still a bit surprised that many seem to be surprised by findings like this one here.

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1. hk__2 ◴[30 Mar 25 07:55 UTC] No.43522271[source]▶
> Look at how many apps require permission to see you contacts.

It is so annoying that it’s either "give access to ALL my contacts and ALL their information (yes, even the notes I took on their favorite things for next Christmas)" or "don’t give access". I wish we could limit the number of contacts and the level of information we give.

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2. normie3000 ◴[30 Mar 25 09:27 UTC] No.43522743[source]▶
Photo access has improved a lot in this regard recently.
3. subscribed ◴[30 Mar 25 14:42 UTC] No.43524577[source]▶
Check if GrapheneOS suits your needs. It has "contact scopes", ie you cna literally allow the app to see single contact only.

Same with storage scopes: one directory and that's it.

4. CharlesW ◴[30 Mar 25 17:34 UTC] No.43525917[source]▶
> It is so annoying that it’s either "give access to ALL my contacts and ALL their information… […] I wish we could limit the number of contacts and the level of information we give.

iOS added fine-grained (at the contact level) access to contacts data last year.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/you-can-control-which-contacts-a...

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5. MBCook ◴[30 Mar 25 18:30 UTC] No.43526361[source]▶
They did the same for photos years ago.

Many apps have not updated and perhaps never will.

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6. CharlesW ◴[30 Mar 25 19:31 UTC] No.43526828{3}[source]▶
They don't need to be, since it's enforced at the OS level. Users can limit permissions to individual contacts regardless of whether iOS apps have been updated to explicitly handle that use case.
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7. mercutio2 ◴[31 Mar 25 03:24 UTC] No.43530566[source]▶
iOS hasn’t allowed access to contact notes for several years, and last year added support for providing arbitrary subsets of contacts to all apps.
8. MBCook ◴[31 Mar 25 22:43 UTC] No.43540766{4}[source]▶
I meant updated yo the newer nicer replacement UIs.

For example I know Slack still doesn’t use the single picture picker. They still want access to everything.

So iOS lets me limit what they can see, but it’s still a pain compared to just letting me pick the one picture I want.