Help Long Time iPhone User Switching - Need Help with Email

[hibbity26]

Hello everyone,

I've used iPhone for many years, but I decided to try out android and see how it goes. So far I really like it. I got the Galaxy S7 Edge a couple days ago. It is nothing at all like iOS, and because of that it's taking me a long time to transition over smoothly.

Right now I am in the process of setting up my email accounts onto my phone. I'm using Samsung's email app (instead of the gmail app). I am setting up my school's email account which uses Microsoft Exchange. When I set it up, I get a pop up asking me to give this account permission to erase all data, turn off cameras, turn off unctions, turn off wifi, text messaging, internet, bluetooth, and many, many other administrative actions.

Do I really have to give an email account all of these features? Why does it need all these permissions? Can I turn that off? Thanks in advanced.

 

[mikedt]

One thing "Permission to erase all data", things like that might be required and set by the Exchange admins for their security. So like if your phone was ever stolen, it has the possibility to remotely erase its data, especially as this is a school email. Exchange can impose security policy on BYOD client devices before it grants them access.

iOS has all this as well, but Apple keeps it all hidden and thinks that their users don't need to know about it......"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

 

[hibbity26]

Welcome in from the dark side. Believe it or not, all these permissions and more were already silently built-into the iPhone OS. Android gives you a lot more control over these activities and is more transparent regarding internal activities. All these permissions are necessary for your built-in email account to execute all its present and essentially future potential capabilities. There is no real loss of security and control when you give these permissions. Some of these permissions are not obvious. For example: –

You choose to use your camera to take a picture. Once you've taken the picture you have an option to email that picture to a friend or family member. Without this permission linking your camera with your email account that very attractive option would not be possible. If you want to transfer the picture using Bluetooth that permission would be necessary. If you wrote a email and decided to erase part of it you would need the ability to erase data etc. etc. etc.
When you give permissions you are essentially allowing interactions between different apps/abilities greatly expanding the capabilities of your phone. The difference between android and Apple is, android lets you know of and control these interactions while Apple if you in the dark and does what they want to do.

Long-winded way of saying, these permissions are not a problem. However if you are downloading an app that you're not sure about that asked for permissions you have the option of denying these permissions (at the risk of it being unable to function).

One thing "Permission to erase all data", things like that might be required and set by the Exchange admins for their security. So like if your phone was ever stolen, it has the possibility to remotely erase its data, especially as this is a school email. Exchange can impose security policy on BYOD client devices before it grants them access.

iOS has all this as well, but Apple keeps it all hidden and thinks that their users don't need to know about it......"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

Thank you both of you. I'm still slowly getting used to my new phone. I never realized how incredibly different Android is from iOS. Thanks for letting me know how it works. One of the reasons I left Apple was because of how much they keep their users in the dark about things so it's nice to see that Android lets me know exactly what it's doing.