Phone call access

ladyoliveeyes@gmail.com

I am not a programmer, I am a Samsung Hub game buyer. I buy many, many Hidden object games. I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy 4 for the bigger screen. I just contacted the game programmer (Pig Out Productions) who uses Gamesalad to make the games I'd like to purchase, but after reading the APP purchasing requirements have decided I needed a more in depth answer to my requirement question than they gave me.
Their answer was that their games are made with Gamesalad game programming, and that Gamesalad lists the APP permissions for the games being programmed. They assured me that Gamesalad only accesses the internet for crash reporting and they understood if I chose not to purchase their games. So I signed up to this site to hopefully get the answer to my question.

I would like to know why, in the APP purchasing permissions does it require the APP to have access to MONITOR, RECORD, and PROCESS my phone calls?
Why would Gamesalad games need to have access to my personal cell phone calls, and how is that even legal?
A detailed answer would be appreciated, or I just saved a ton of money and will just continue to buy APPS from ITunes for my Itouch.
Thanks, LadyO

jonmulcahy

I've understood that the READ_PHONE_STATE access is used to determine if a phone call comes in so the app can properly pause. it's not doing anything nefarious. you can check out this thread of details of what information IS collected:

http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/61902/updated-privacy-policy-and-data-collection-summary#latest

tatiang

And while someone outside of this community might not take me at my word, there's no way to program any interaction with the phone controls of the device. At a developer level, we aren't given access to pausing or even detecting phone calls. And we certainly don't have access to any of your private data, phone-related or otherwise. The company GameSalad does code in phone-related functionality as @jonmulcahy mentioned but it's all hardwired into any apps that we create or publish with GameSalad.

ladyoliveeyes@gmail.com

Well, I've read through everything and nowhere did I see anything describing what is
written in the APP purchase requirements about MONITORING, or RECORDING. I understand access to pause the game for a call, though it doesn't really describe that either. So why is monitoring and recording even included in the phone access permissions? It must be stated in there for a reason? It's also listed further down in the permissions list where most people don't bother looking down at. Hmmm.

jonmulcahy

@codewizard, @blackcloakgs have a moment to chime in with some background information?

CodeWizard

I'm happy to answer this although I'll need to do more research to be sure why those permissions are asked for.

In the meantime, here's my theory: We've integrated a couple of ad networks into the engine that are included in every GameSalad game on Android. Ad networks are notorious for requiring rather invasive permissions. It's likely a simple matter of those networks saying they need the permissions and so we put them in the manifest for every GameSalad app. It's not ideal but that's where we're at now.

I can also tell you that we don't monitor or collect any information about phone calls of any sort. The previously mentioned link to our data collection policy spells it out in black & white exactly what we collect.

I'll do some more research on this and see what I find out. Please bear with me as it may be a few days before I get back to this.

ladyoliveeyes@gmail.com

Thank you. I would certainly appreciate it.