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I can't believe the wearable app (for galaxy buds) is actual allowed on the playstore. The permissions the app asks for are nothing I've ever seen before. It asks for EVERYTHING , literally. And if you remove a single permission, the app won't work. Samsungs privacy policy is not making it any better.

Since there's no alternative app, how would one go about isolating an app in a way, that it won't be able to access, or, for example, receive access to a fake/empty contact, calendar, call list, gps etc.?

I am aware of apps such as AppOPs or whatever the name is, but I think we can all agree that nowadays, you can't trust ANY app. Especially if it's from the (censored) playstore.

PS: Would a new user profile like Island or Shelter even isolate contacts, call list, gps etc? How about battery consumption (running 2 users)

Device: Oneplus 7 Pro

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  • On my phone, before connecting any Samung wearable devices, it only asks for location and phone permissions. Location is needed to do bluetooth scans for Samsung wearable devices. According to the description phone permission is needed to access device identifiers, which sounds more nefarious. That probably includes the imei number. I ended up blocking Wear's internet access through an android firewall (AFWall+), but that requires root. That should at least prevent Wear from phoning home my data, but it will also block device firmware updates.
    – JanKanis
    Oct 14, 2022 at 13:22
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    @JanKanis thank you for commenting, I thought this post was dead after a day, 9 months ago haha. I feel your pain, I ended up simply discovering that you can view the battery percentage & control noise cancel. through the widget WITHOUT granting permissions. I blocked the app's network and background access so no phoning home. I think I granted permissioms intially just once to change audio preset but then removed all perms and blocked access as described above. (My OEM phone allows blocking of WiFi & celluar data through app settings (hold->details), your milage may vary. PiHole also exists).
    – StellarEquilibrium
    Oct 15, 2022 at 17:16
  • Ooh. Using the widget is clever hack, @StellarEquilibrium this should be in its own answer here because that is a killer tip
    – sehe
    Nov 4, 2022 at 23:55
  • Oh darn. It appears Samsung plugged that "hole". Even the widgets runs into the permissions nag screen. They must be really motivated to harvest all the information :(
    – sehe
    Nov 5, 2022 at 2:32

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