Hello, i was wondering how many of you guys stopped using/uninstalled the Messenger app for facebook after all the privacy scare claims were surfacing. i have been talking to my friends about it , and some of them tell me "all apps ask for permission for the same things that messenger asks for." . what do you people think about this?
It is true that a lot of apps ask for more permissions that they need, but I think it's just the fact that facebook is in the "getting your data" business that scares people. It bothers me, either way, so whenever I need to chat I just open the browser.
I actually use facebook as my primary chat medium since it's impossible to get my friends to all switch to something nicer. If there is ever a decent 3rd party facebook messenger app made, I'll make the switch straight away.
I did the same as Demagolka - I just use the browser to pull up facebook and the chat works just fine through that. Got rid of the app a while back. Never looked back.
< No facebook, problem solved xD
On the permissions thing. It very much depends on what the app wants to do and some apps try to be all things for everyone which needs a lot of permissions.
For example if the app wants to look at contacts it needs that permission, it could potentially do anything with that but usually its just for you to easily start a message to a contact.
Voice recognition for speaking out messages might need permission for the microphone. Has it decided to be an sms app too? not it need permission to use SMS and may cause charges if it sends SMS.
It adds up. That said, its facebook. They make money off of data and probably have some sort of analytics on messenger use, who your connected to etc.