Why is Magic Earth accessing my phone?

[valerieos]

Hello all,

When checking in my Confidentiality dashboard, I noticed that Magic Earth is accessing my phone:

What troubles me, is that I have never opened that app, moved it in a far away screen. I am using Organic map instead. I have checked over a couple of days and it keeps reappearing from time to time.

=> Can I deactivate Magic Earth without messing up the OS,
=> and by the way, does anyone know why he is doing that? (honestly, that worries me).

Thank you!

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services

[aibd]

Can be easily changed.

Settings > Apps and notifications > See all … apps > Magic Earth > Permissions > Telephone > Deny.

I do not know why the default is on, other that to give full functionality of the app

• https://www.magicearth.com/faq-en/

You could use this technique to remove it from your view

• Uninstall default apps - #29 by AnotherElk

[marcdw]

I assume Telephone is the modern equivalent to the Phone permission? If so the GPS falls under that permission (or at least used to).

Heh, my brain was in another place when I wrote that.
Was probably thinking of something from a long time ago dealing with GPS and READ_PHONE_STATE.
Oops.

[obacht]

@marcdw

GPS

…belongs to another group of permissions (Location - not sure about the exact English term)

From what I read the most harmless usecase seems to be that apps ask for Telephone-permission in order to make way and pause for incoming calls (phone status).
(Seems to be common among apps… no idea if achievable otherwise/without that permission)
Least that sounds like a plausible scenario for a navigation app used in a car while driving …

These sources give a quick overview (these are in German and throw ads at you, sorry for that, but the list/table are helpful… I also did not find similar sources in English):
here and here