Google. The American company announced a radical decision regarding the Android operating system and the applications that are available in Google Play for users around the world at the moment. More specifically, Google announced that it will remove from Google Play those applications that violate its rules regarding access to SMS and call book data, that is, extremely many applications that are currently available in the App Store.
Google. Applications that allow sending SMS messages, as well as those that replace the standard dialer in the application for calling, will be the most affected by the change in the American policy. Google is reacting after many people complained that there are applications that needlessly ask for access to SMS and call history, including some that were not designed to provide functions related to these types of interactions with other people .
Google wants to remove from Android applications that access SMS and call history
Google. Since October, the company has started telling developers that their applications violate its rules regarding access to user data, giving them 90 days to solve their existing problems. Those who have not yet done so, will soon have their applications excluded from Google Play, which will ultimately force them to meet all the security requirements that Google imposes for its users to have their data kept safe .
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. For example, developers using SMS for account verification can alternatively use the SMS Retriever API, and apps that want to share content using SMS can prepopulate a message and trigger the default SMS app to show via intents.
Google. The decision to delete applications from Google Play came after the company discovered that most applications exploit permissions to offer functionality that can be offered without accessing SMS or call history. This is something "normal" in Android because developers have almost always abused the freedom that Google offers for its operating system, and now it wants to make a little order among the applications.
