No one said they were bypassing the OS. Have you seen the permissions some apps ask for ? Messenger used to straight up refuse to work if it couldn’t access your contacts and what your screen is showing at all times (allegedly to allow their shitty app widget to always display on top of whatever you’re doing). Don’t need a microphone to spy on anyone with that.
To be fair, the Android permission system is crap. I have an app to automate certain things. It requests only the exact permissions required for the actions I have configured. All I want to do is enable auto-rotate if a certain app is in the foreground and set portrait mode otherwise. In order to do that, the app needs full screen reader access and can theoretically see everything that’s on the screen.
That said, I personally don’t believe the Messenger app was well intentioned. But if it were, it may not have a choice but to request these permissisions for legitimate use cases.
True, and the applications are targeting children. Perhaps they’re praying on a user who will grant permissions without asking questions, of which there are many.
No one said they were bypassing the OS. Have you seen the permissions some apps ask for ? Messenger used to straight up refuse to work if it couldn’t access your contacts and what your screen is showing at all times (allegedly to allow their shitty app widget to always display on top of whatever you’re doing). Don’t need a microphone to spy on anyone with that.
To be fair, the Android permission system is crap. I have an app to automate certain things. It requests only the exact permissions required for the actions I have configured. All I want to do is enable auto-rotate if a certain app is in the foreground and set portrait mode otherwise. In order to do that, the app needs full screen reader access and can theoretically see everything that’s on the screen. That said, I personally don’t believe the Messenger app was well intentioned. But if it were, it may not have a choice but to request these permissisions for legitimate use cases.
True, and the applications are targeting children. Perhaps they’re praying on a user who will grant permissions without asking questions, of which there are many.