I have Xprivacy and Cyanogenmod's privacy guard, and also use the Amazon Underground store and apps. I can tell you that with location, contacts, and most other permissions blocked the apps work just fine. So whatever the author did to get this result, it isn't from blocking permissions.<p>It also seems strange that someone who cares so much about his privacy doesn't have xposed with Xprivacy, because then he could have spoofed the data instead of having to block it all together.
Amazon Underground pays the app developer for the duration of usage of the app, and so needs to track how long you are using the app for. Perhaps it needs data tracking enabled to identify the duration of usage?
What is the fear here?<p>I'm not talking about shady apps you downloaded off some dodgy pirated Android app store, or apps where you agree to this sort of tracking so you get free apps (e.g. Amazon Underground, which the author is using).<p>I mean - official apps such as Twitter, Snapchat, or say Microsoft or Google applications.<p>Can anybody quantify what they are scared of, if an app tracks how often you use it, or collects anonymised metrics?
There is a desktop client for Play store called Racoon. When I used my phone for several years without a Google account, from time to time I would need some app (for taxes, bankning, public transport, whatever) that was distributed via the Play Store exclusively, but I had no problem downloading that APK using Racoon and installing it separately. You don't get notified of updates, and updating is a manual process, but for for a single user that wants to avoid the Google services it's workable.
So the Amazon Underground tracking requires location tracking as well? If it was just usage tracking I don't see an issue with it seeing as Amazon Underground is meant to be optional and you get free apps in return.
This happened to one of my mates:
1. Ordered some stuff from Amazon using Tor
2. Amazon tracked the change in IP
3. Amazon automatically cancelled the orders and sent a password reset email saying his account may have been compromised
I love that Apple is run by a man whose pretty vanilla personal life would get him harassed by the security apparatus of lots of countries -- it really gives me faith that Apple make a good faith best-effort to protect user privacy in their walled gardens.