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[Brah]

Anyone looked into this Android app?

As one who like to customize my environment, I was initially interested, then I saw it can read basically everything on your phone including SMSs, so I didn't download it.

Who would install anything like that? Of course Google is pretty wide open already, but bring Yahoo into that as well?

[zzm9980]

Anyone looked into this Android app?

As one who like to customize my environment, I was initially interested, then I saw it can read basically everything on your phone including SMSs, so I didn't download it.

Who would install anything like that? Of course Google is pretty wide open already, but bring Yahoo into that as well?

Lots of Android apps ask for those types of permissions, it's not uncommon. Realistically you probably can assume the publisher pushing out those apps aren't going to abuse the privileges.

However the realistic concerns comes into play when one of those apps have a vulnerability (significantly more common than most realize) which allows someone to then abuse those privileges. For example, if an app needs to "Read SD Card" and another app saves its data there... Here's a recent example where people were able to steal someone's Whatsapp Chat logs and Photos:
http://hackread.com/whatsapp-security-f ... ead-chats/

[Brah]

I hear you, but which other apps read your SMSes?

Or am I just being naive?

[zzm9980]

I hear you, but which other apps read your SMSes?

Or am I just being naive?

It's not that they're literally reading them (well, they may be, you really don't know), but they may offer functionality that integrates with SMS. For example, you need to "activate" the app via SMS but the app automatically scans for the incoming SMS to auto-activate. Or maybe you're installing an app that integrates SMS with another messenger service (Google Hangout or Facebook messenger are two I know of). Etc.

Reading SMS is probably one of the more benign things you can give an Android app permission to do.