via Reddit:
I recently acquired a new phone, the ZTE Fanfare 3, which was quickly set up for me by a very helpful employee. It was promptly destroyed a few weeks later when I fell asleep in the tub while reading. I aquired another one, but decided to set it up myself instead of allowing the store employee to do it for me. I am extremely happy I did!
One of the first screens I was greeted with upon setup was one advocating I give the phone access to “record audio, take pictures, and record video without having to ask permission“.
WHAT?! No motherfuckers, I do NOT allow this phone to record audio and video without having to ask me permission! I suddenly realized that the kid at the cellular service store (who set up my previous phone) had been instructed to give everyone’s phone permission to spy without even asking the customer.
Sure as shit, as I began to use my new phone on the internet, I became shocked at the number of websites which seek to record video and audio of us while we peruse their site for information. About 10% of the sites we visit want audio and video of us, surreptitiously gathered by our phones given unknown permissions at the cellular service store by employees who never asked us.
Since I didn’t give permission for this invasion of my privacy, my phone (supposedly) has to ask permission to record every time it is prompted by a website and I get the following requests in a pop-up on my screen.
imgur.com/gallery/Ra6EYzehttps:
www.dropbox.com/s/mbve0qdf3jp12e1/Screenshot_20180508-061452%20%282%29.png?dl=0
The above Dropbox link was added because the second Imgur link which I ascertained twice to be valid before posting has been replaced with silliness; last time I checked, it was a Gary Larson cartoon.
As you can see, lawandcrime .com wanted to record me as I visited the site. There are many other websites which do this, I am now finding out.
This is ridiculous. I had no idea until I set up my own phone that the employees at Cricket, Verizon, Apple, etcetera are just giving our phones mass permissions to spy on us as they set them up for service. They never asked my permission when they set up my phones in the past; I’ll never let someone else do that for me again.
Anyone unaware of this whom didn’t properly deny the permissions at setup is now daily being recorded by their phone without knowing, prompted by some of the websites they visit.
I’ve never seen this discussed here. I’m extremely surprised that I’m the first to post about it, since I am clueless when it comes to most things technological.