Angry Birds now SENDS SMS messages?

[extorian]

Noticed on the latest update to Angry Birds it requires a few new permissions - including reading your SMS and MMS messages, and SENDING SMS messages.

Time to uninstall I think.

[crazythunder]

i read on a different site that they (rovio) are aware of it and will fix it monday. it's a coding error.
http://twitter.com/roviomobile

[extorian]

As a developer myself, the only way that permission would appear is if it is requested in the manifest file. You have to add permissions manually yourself to the manifest file. The only reason anyone would bother to go through the steps to add a permission to the manifest is if the app actually did need to use that permission (i.e. crashed / errored / complained during testing when it attempted to send an SMS message without the permission in the manifest).

Sure, they might have added some code to send SMS messages (why add it in the first place?), then removed it, and forgot to remove the permission in the manifest, but I doubt they added the permission accidentally. That would be pretty hard to do.

I like to be paranoid about apps doing dubious things, and it's saved a lot of pain on a number of occasions. It may well be safe. It may well be genuine mistake. But I've lost trust in them. The game is good, but not that good for me to keep it after this.

Edit: For reference, they'd have had to add this to the manifest file. It would be pretty hard to do this accidentally:



<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.SEND_SMS">
</uses-permission>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_SMS">
</uses-permission>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_SMS">
</uses-permission>

[crazythunder]

i'm no dev but i'll take your word for it. maybe it had something to do with the superbowl commercial? at least they acknowledged it and will "supposedly" remove it. maybe they're getting a little too big in the head with all the popularity.

[ewilts]

Noticed on the latest update to Angry Birds it requires a few new permissions - including reading your SMS and MMS messages, and SENDING SMS messages.
Requesting permission to do something is not the same as actually doing it.

Your subject line is in error - there has been no proof (in fact a denial by Rovio) that Angry Birds SENDS SMS message.

[extorian]

The error was the fact I had a '.' at the end instead of a '?'. I've changed it accordingly.

It's true that needing the permission to do something is not the same as doing it, but my point above in post #3 was that you would only ever go through the effort of adding the code to the manifest file to request the permission if you actually had code in your app that wouldn't work without it.