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Explain permissions

T

Tigger 1

Member
I was looking at AVG & AVAST antivirus and several of the permissions were quite ridiculous. Can someone here tell me why they need most of the things they want like sending email without my knowledge.
 
An antivirus app has to communicate with "home" all the time, to find out if there are any new virus definitions. (Viruses don't come with labels that say "this app is a virus", they're recognized by certain patterns in their data.) New viruses come along all the time, so you need new virus definition files all the time. An anti-virus program is only as good as the last data file it downloaded.
 
I understand needing to keep the virus definitions up to date but I didn't think the app would do that by making phone calls, text messages and emails without your knowledge. Also editing your contacts and calendar one even wanted to create a log of my phone calls. I don't see what these things have to do with scanning for viruses and allowing me to remove them.
 
You have to look at permissions in an abstract way. If the dev explained them to you you'd be like "d'oh right i understand".
I think theres a sticky thread somewhere about permissions but an example i use is that an app needs to have access to your calls so that it knows when you get a call and shuts itself up instead of interrupting your call lol :)
 
Thanks I will check that out. I guess one option would be to download the app and let it check the system out the disable it until I feel the need to run it again. I have several apps that I rarely use disabled to save system resources but still have the ability to use them when needed.
 
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