Tip of the Week: Manage Your Android App Permissions

Mobile devices are crucial to the productivity and success of modern businesses, but they bring with them countless opportunities for security risks and issues. To combat this, you need to be cognizant of these risks and manage the permissions of your applications. Let’s discuss how you can manage the permissions you grant applications on your Android smartphone.

Managing Your Android App Permissions

First, it’s important to know how the permissions of your Android applications work. By default, the app itself won’t be granted permissions; you have to do this for yourself. The first time you start up an application, it will ask you for permissions. For example, if you load up Instagram or some other type of photo-sharing app, you’ll see a request from the app for permissions to access your media library, photos, and camera.

Ultimately, you get to decide if and when the app has permission to access these parts of your device. You can give permission only when the app is active, for example, or exclusively for a one-time thing.

Additionally, you can manage an app’s permissions at any time by going to your device’s Settings app. You can either find this by swiping down on your device and selecting the gear icon, or you can find the Settings app from your applications screen. From here, you can go to the Apps portion of your Settings.

A list of applications on your device should appear, but you might need to expand to see the full list. From here, just select the app you want to adjust permissions for and select Permissions. You’ll see permissions for the application from this screen, including those which you have allowed. To make a change to these permissions, all you have to do is tap them to adjust as needed.

You can also bulk-adjust permissions through the Privacy section of the Settings app. When you click on Privacy, you’ll see an option for Permission Manager. When you select this, you’ll see a list of permissions and the apps that have access to them. When you select one, you can choose to disable the permission for these apps—just select the one you want to disable and you’re all set.

Consider Mobile Device Management

If you would like more control over your business’ mobile device infrastructure, a mobile device management solution can help to give you a bird’s eye view of how your organization is utilizing mobile devices in the workplace. This includes managing permissions for the various applications your employees use throughout the workday, among other things, like whitelisting and blacklisting applications and remote wiping.

What are some tips you would like to see us cover in future blogs about technology? Let us know in the comments.