Most of the third-party apps require special permissions on your phone to work accurately. Some third-party video players, music players, and file managers might prompt you to provide your phone’s storage permission. Several third-party apps might also require access to your phone’s messages and calls. In order to ensure the well-being of your device, you should always check the permissions obtained from installed apps on your device. Nowadays, most of the new Android versions allow users to easily oversee and control app permission from one place.
Allowing permissions to random apps could have dreadful outcomes. For example, if an app requires SMS and call reading permissions, it could also read the OTPs sent by your bank. The app developers and owners can use it to make random transactions on your bank account.
Some apps demand storage permissions, and if you allow it, the app developer gets complete access to your phone’s storage, which could be a privacy threat. These apps can easily steal data from your device, and then the developers can sell it to third parties for advertisement purposes.
If the app you have installed is not much reliable and is downloaded from unofficial sources such as unofficial websites, even worse can happen to your privacy.
Hence, it is indeed important to regularly view and control app permission on your Android device. It is not a hard task at all in the newer Android version. Within a few taps, you can reach the Android App Permissions manager tool.
In this article, you will be learning how to quickly see and control app permissions on Android.
2 Types of App Permissions
Android devices have two types of app permissions that you should view and manage in order to make sure that the app doesn’t become a threat to your device.
The first type of app permission is granted to an application before downloading and installing it from Google Play Store. Most users just blindly confirm these app permissions while installing an app from Google Play Store. You might also have allowed apps to use your phone’s messages, storage, and other resources in order to install and run.
Even though some people know about these permissions, they allow the app to use them to get the app working.
Gladly, in the past several years, another type of app permissions came to existence. These permissions are only available on Android 6.0 or newer. With the new app permission feature on Android 6.0, users can grant permissions to the app only for the period they are in use. When the apps are not in use, your phone itself revokes the app permissions. This innovation has created significant awareness among users to carefully allow app permissions.
The latest Android, like 9.0 Pie and Android 10, has improved security significantly. Now the SMS and call log access are divided from the general app permissions. Even if you allow an app to use the “Phone” permission, it will not include access to your SMS and call logs. This will simply prevent apps from reading and modifying your SMS and call logs. It means no app would be reading your banking OTPs, and other private or sensitive SMS without your dedicated consent.
This will significantly enhance the security of your banking transactions because it was too easy for the app developers to read your SMS prior to this update.
However, you can’t revoke several app permissions even on the latest Android if they are granted at the time of installation. If you need special permission after the installation to work, you can easily manage it on your device. You grant and revoke these types of permission anytime as per your desire.
How to See and Manage App Permission on Android
Follow the below instructions to open the app permissions wizard and then view allowed and disallowed app permissions:
Navigate to the Settings app on your smartphone.
Then look for the option saying “Apps & Notifications” and then click on it.
Once you are in, head to “App Permissions.”
Now App Permissions wizard is open, and you can view particular permissions of your apps. For example, the app permissions are sorted by type of permission like Camera, Contacts, SMS, Microphone, etc.
You can tap on permission to see what apps are currently using it.
To revoke permission from an app, simply toggle the slider switch.
That is how you can easily oversee and view app permission on your smartphone. You should check whether app permission granted by a specific app makes any sense. For example, if you see a third-party camera app asking you to provide SMS permission, it doesn’t make any sense. You should inspect all apps and permissions carefully on your device to ensure optimal security.
Source:- Control App Permissions
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