No, thank you, you nice little app. If you wanted to call someone to find out the weather, I think I can do it myself.

There may be something relevant within that permission

I wonder what the other permission was. Maybe camera access could better identify the weather?

Really though, weather is very complex.
It's a chaos system.

@electrineer That's just bad application design then. If a weather application requests permission for Phone, that's shady.

@YousifMansour The other one was access to my files and gallery. Probably to understand my "weather preferences".

Table 1 shows you which permissions belong to which groups:
https://developer.android.com/guide...

READ_PHONE_STATE allows for current cellular network information. Maybe they want to use that?

Maybe they want to call God and ask what he has in store for the weather tomorrow so they can show better predictions?

What baffles me is this:

Something as unpredictable as the weather wants to call on your behalf? What if it is really gloomy? Your call may not go through at all.. and if its too sunny, it may actively try to call up your friends when you might not be in the mood for chit chat...

@electrineer Agreed. I'm not accusing them of having malicious intents. But once that permission is granted, they can do any of those others mentioned in the group. Hence, it's unsafe. Those are classified as "dangerous permissions" for a reason.
In fact, if they need network status, I'm sure there are other ways to do it like ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE if I remember right. And I think that's a normal permission even.

@monkehparade Could just give me the number. I mean, I have a lot to ask. Weather's prolly the last on the list.

@exceptionalGuy depending on the app they probably want to verify your phone number to find out you're a real user but for a weather app that's probably not the case

@exceptionalGuy Oh, it's here. https://imgur.com/gallery/KLLy5

Android permissions have notoriously weird things, like requiring "Phone Call" permission to read some ID in a local database.

The dev probably wanted to use that ID to identify devices, and added the permission required without thinking twice.

@Fradow using the IMEI of the phone as user ID is not encouraged any more, if you want to make a call you can make the phone app open with a number without permission, so I feel that's probably related to data mining, bi or knowledge about the user for the dev. Certainly not needed for use ...

@Fradow And a developer who manages her permissions carelessly is a bad developer. :P

@erxamp I know, it was a bad idea since Android 3.0 that introduced tablet support, since tablets don't have an IMEI number.

I like to apply Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

(1 of 2) 😳

It needs the permission for calling the rain.

dude i want that product sans too :/

@CodeAlex You want what now?

I have made a weather app and it may read phone state for network. But there is no need for reading contacts and making calls.

@anki7 What permission have you used? You wouldn't need a "Dangerous Permission" for a weather app.

@exceptionalGuy Just one. Location which is required to be explicit.
Others are implicit which are required by the app such as network and storage. That's it.

It will call the sun and send the data of this call to the cloud.