App Privacy Protection

hey everybody,

my game is listed on a big german game site Chip.de. They started to check apps about how many permissions they are using. The app gets an overall app-risk-rating at the end.

My game Battle Wizard Attack has only 9% what is very good. I could not find any other app with a lower rating so far. It is made with C2+Crosswalk and I am using these plugins: Admob, ScreenOrientation, LocalNotification, GameService, ShareviaSNS, RateApp, GoogleAnalytics, StatusBar, LocalStorage, Browser and PowerManagement.

On installation my app requires only these permissions:

android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE

android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE

android.permission.INTERNET

android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

In IntelXDK I set storage to only internal so I don't know why that is required. Does anybody know how to reduce these? Does Admob require Network & Wifi access? It would be great to have an overview about what plugin requires permissions.

My risk-rating is only 9% but would love to maybe even get a 0%^^. In Germany it is very important. Many apps have around 35% because of collecting a lot of private user data.

Let me know what you think about privacy protection and if it is worth dropping a plugin for less permissions.

I just saw they also found these third party components on it:

com.google.analytics

org.apache.cordova

javax.annotation.meta

com.squareup.okhttp

com.google.tagmanager

com.google.ads

So I guess the 9% are mostly caused by ads and analytics

You can look up permissions in a plugin's .xml file.

e.g. for Cranberry's Phonegap Game plugin

line 42 - android.permission.INTERNET

line 43 - android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE

I'm also concerned about privacy, but haven't need to use any restrictions so far, maybe later, in the future when I'll want to add more features to my apps. I think, your rating is good. When your plugins are from a trusted source, there's no need to change anything.