I am greatly displeased at the smartphone industry. I think it's time for a heavy handed crackdown about all the spying they're doing. The smartphone industry and in particular the company qualcomm I find an intolerable company in their practice, I believe they should be smashed, their equiment liquidated and their intellectual property destroyed.
The smartphone industry is a festering cancer on general computing, a persistent and pernicious assault on human rights. An invasion of our private spaces. A colonization of our lives.
I think it is past the point of reform, not that there are any regulator with to intelligence figure out what is wrong let alone the wherewithal to do anything about.
For those reasons, I think global thermonuclear war is our only realistic option for setting back the clock on this travesty.
I am willing to hear your alternative, I don't believe anything short of that has a snowball's chance in hell to change anything about this.
The spying, as you call it, at the OS level is one thing, the data leakage at an App level is a different thing entirely. The lengths that the Google Play store goes to hide permissions and the poor level of granularity, let alone the wholesale outsourcing of service critical applications and their "required" permissions is beyond the pale and not regulated, let alone enforced, in any way.
For shits and giggles, you should check the permissions associated with your bank, telco, government, medical and other life essential applications, never mind the ones you use for entertainment.
None of my apps have any permissions other than location when the app is open, camera, and file access.
What apps and permissions are you specifically talking about? Can you provide any specific examples?
I recently explored the android app permissions for Telstra which requires so you can manage your phone. Then I checked Optus, Boost, CBA, NAB, ANZ, gmail, chrome and Tesla to name a few.
Privacy should not be optional.
Here's what I found:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTl3_RWZmVNPmMYKF7Go2eHgvT6e1expOkbkXzjnRYY72L3RADKS-NaEX2eoDwN-ig0mWAmOogws3bx/pubhtml
A long list without context is entirely unhelpful. The permissions need to be enabled and are likely to have features associated with them.
So your correct privacy shouldn't be optional. So which of these apps have features turned on that don't require a user accepting them or wanting the feature?
Frankly, almost all of these permissions are initiated my a user at first sight making some assumptions.
The long list is the permissions as the Google Play store presents it.
Below each app column shows empty if that permission is not required, or shows the permission if it is.
I'm not sure how else you feel that this information should be presented.
As far as vague goes, that's my point. We grant permissions to launch an app with often little or no thought as to their interactions, like calender contacts and internet, or files and internet, or system permissions.