High-Risk Permissions

Ellen Messmer via Jim Dalrymple:

Of the 412,222 Android apps evaluated from Google Play, Bit9 says more than 290,000 of them access at least one high-risk permission, 86,000 access five or more and 8,000 apps access 10 or more permissions “flagged as potentially dangerous.”

While I've no doubt that "wallpaper" apps don't need access to anything on one's phone this excerpt seems unfair to Android. We all remember Path-gate, and the outrage over that. It happens in iOS as well. And if you read through what Bit9 says are 'high-risk permissions' some of these very permissions are available to devs on the iOS platform as well. Like GPS location data and Contacts data. Granted, iOS now requires users to expressly approve any application's access to this data, but that by no means makes the average user totally safe from an app maliciously crafted by a devious developer.

What I think would be more interesting would be an analysis of 412,222 applications on the iOS App Store to see how many of them access 'high-risk permissions' the difference there would be a much more honest comparison.