Accept. Accept. Accept. Accept.
That’s the sound of you handing your entire digital life to a company you’ve never heard of, registered in a country you can’t find on a map, in exchange for a free wallpaper app.
Stop it.
I installed a free QR code scanner last year. It wanted access to my microphone, my contacts, my calendar, my location, and my photos. A QR code scanner. It literally just needs the camera. Why does it need my contact list?
Because you are not the user. You are the product.
Data is oil. Has been for a decade. But in 2026, the extraction has gotten surgical. These apps don’t just want to show you ads—they’re building behavioral profiles. What time you wake up (accelerometer data). Where you eat lunch (GPS). Who you talk to (contact list + microphone). What you’re interested in buying (browsing data). This profile gets sold to data brokers who sell it to advertisers who sell it to… actually, nobody really knows where the chain ends. That’s the terrifying part.
The worst offenders are the ‘utility’ apps. Flashlights. Calculators. File managers. Battery optimizers. These are apps that should need zero permissions beyond basic storage. But they ask for everything, and we click ‘Accept’ because the alternative—actually reading the permissions list—takes 30 seconds we’d rather spend scrolling.
Here’s the rule I follow now: if it doesn’t need to be an app, use the website. Web browsers are sandboxed. A website can’t access your contacts. It can’t turn on your microphone without a visible prompt. It can’t silently track your GPS in the background.
That’s why I use web tools like GetInSaver instead of installing download apps. The browser is the safeguard. The moment you install an APK, you’re opening a door that’s very hard to close.
Stay paranoid. Read the permissions. And for the love of everything, delete that flashlight app. Your phone already has one built in.