We heard reports of iOS allowing third party apps to get access to pictures stored on the phone and we heard that Apple had quickly acknowledged that and said they are working on a fix and now we have news that Google’s Android too allows the pictures to be accessed by almost any application.
Well both the iOS and Android allow pictures to be accessed but their ways are totally different. While Apple was masking photo access with other permissions and doesn’t allow the apps to access it, Google’s Android stores photos in a standard directory in the main filesystem which is not actually a flaw but it has designed as such so as to store pictures on an external memory card.
We originally designed the Android photos file system similar to those of other computing platforms like Windows and Mac OS. At the time, images were stored on a SD card, making it easy for someone to remove the SD card from a phone and put it in a computer to view or transfer those images.
As phones and tablets have evolved to rely more on built-in, non-removable memory, we’re taking another look at this and considering adding a permission for apps to access images. We’ve always had policies in place to remove any apps on Android Market that improperly access your data.
Lets hope Apple and Google come out with new fixes pretty soon so as to stop the scrutiny of privacy and security on mobile devices.
