The folks at Rovio Mobile Limited have granted this earth a brand new world of Angry Birds today – and it’s not the Valentine’s Day edition. Ham Em’ High is a western themed AB world with 30 extra levels, a few new bonus items and – new to the whole game, a graphics toggle for lower end devices. No more need for Angry Birds Lite. Only thing this expansion doesn’t have is a good reason for asking for permission to use your sms – WHOA WHAT?!

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, take a peek at what this upgrade has to offer in the permissions department:

This application has access to the following:
• Services that cost you money
Send Sms Messages
Allows application to send SMS messages. Malicious applications may cost you money by sending messages without your confirmation.

• Your messages
Receive Sms
Allows application to receive and process SMS messages. Malicious applications may monitor your messages or delete them without showing them to you.

Read Sms Or Mms
Allows application to read SMS messages stored on your device or SIM card. Malicious applications may read your confidential messages.

• Network communication
Full Internet Access
Allows an application to create network sockets.

• Phone calls
Read Phone State And Identity
Allows the application to access the phone features of the device. An application with this permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the like.

Why Rovio is asking for this permission and what they plan to do with it are a mystery to us. It doesn’t seem very likely that Rovio would opt to read your sms messages, and the text you see above is the same for any app that allows these permissions, but it’s erring on the side of caution, and if you’d like to do the same thing, you’d be better off holding on the download for now, at least until Rovio explains what the deal is.

Take a look at the upgrade for this app in the “What’s New” section in the Android Market listing for Angry Birds: AM_Angry Birds — and perhaps there is no reason to fear. Have a look at some of the reviews left today on the app, followed by a small gallery of gameplay.

7 COMMENTS

  1. The phone state is so the app knows can properly handle things when you get a phone call when you’re playing the game. Many apps have it that have nothing to do with your phone.

    As far as the SMS thing, I’m guessing it might have something to do with the Super Bowl text in thing, but couldn’t be sure.

    I wouldn’t be so paranoid about a big publisher like Rovio. What are they gonna do? Send your dirty texts to your mom?

  2. Many (most or even all) Apps do that and that should not be allowed there should be 0 reason for any app to access your phone data … period… contacts, sms, emails etc… no one should be able to have access to it.

    Apple, Android and others should have this implemented since day one. a game is a game to play not to have any access to my house. but again its like facebook nothing is FREE your data worth something 🙁

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