[Feature request] Individual contact access for Android apps

asked 2015-09-02 20:49:19 +0300

SaimenSays gravatar image

updated 2015-09-02 20:54:39 +0300

Since 1.1.7 there is an option to disallow android apps to access contacts. I think there are two bad things in actual implementation:

  1. It's only possible to allow or disallow it global. But this option has to be an individul App setting. Same as it is for the new option to run background service. I want to disable the contact sync for apps which I don't know why they need access at all.

  2. The actual implementation seems to tell android app there is no phonebook. But this crashes many apps, for example Whatsapp (Unfortunately Whatsup stops working today :/ ). The correct way should simulate a contactbook with 0 contacts, because this should be a vaild situation for android apps.

By the way: I don't know in "Contacts" is the real translation for "Kontakte" App?

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Comments

If you set it to english it's called "People"

__A__ ( 2015-09-02 21:07:02 +0300 )edit
1

I would like to extend this feature request - how about "individual address books"? That way, one can have a separate address book e.g. for data hovers like WhatsApp, where only the bare minimum of data is present (e.g. only contacts that are already on WhatsApp and only mobile numbers, no additional info).

dyraig ( 2015-09-03 13:04:44 +0300 )edit
1

Seems that almost nobody needs or wants this feature. Do all agree with data privacy of some android apps?

SaimenSays ( 2015-09-08 18:54:45 +0300 )edit

There is definitely interest but probably not enough for Jolla to warrant working on it. I though about some kind of whitelist as in the Android notifications app. In principle it should be possible to do it as all Android apps access the third party contacts database. One would somehow have to interrupt the opening of this file, e.g. via inotify? read out the database separately and only give limited/constrained rows back to the requesting app. This way, however there would not be a fixed third party database anymore and OS changed to it should pass through unchanged to a backup which should be held within the deamon/interrupting application.

rod ( 2015-09-13 14:54:04 +0300 )edit

Completely agree with the feature request. This setting needs to be separate for each Android app. Having it global is not really helpful.

Also, yes, a better way of restricting access to the contacts list is to provide a fake empty list, so the Android app would still work.

Drekkarian ( 2015-10-11 14:05:51 +0300 )edit