Earlier this week it was declared that a Wallpaper app was accessing data on millions of people’s phones and sending it to a server in China.  It seemed to flood round the internet like a…  big…  flooding… news item thing.  Reportedly between 1 and 4 million people have willingly installed this Backgrounds app, ignoring the agreement beforehand showing what the app had access to.

I have to be honest, I tend not to look at them in great detail, in fact, I think I’ve installed this app once myself!

Well, now AndroidTapp and Android Central are reporting that Google has lifted the ban and allowed the app back into the market.  Apparently Google has communicated with the developer and advised them on some code changes, pointing out they are asking for access to things they really don’t need access to.

It’s interesting though, so many places declaring this is the weakness of Android, Google has little control over what is submitted to their Market Place.  I guess it’s a fair point, this app had access to your data, it just only used it to tweak wallpapers for your specific device.  Someone could quite easily have written the same app but used the permissions to send your data anywhere they fancied.

Myself I’m too trusting, I don’t join the tin foil hat wearing crew.  To be honest, I wouldn’t care if Google and others did have access to my text messages, there really isn’t anything that exciting going on, but it probably is a good lesson that we should all check through what permissions each app is asking for.  As far as I’m concerned though, that is my responsibility, not Google’s.  I suggest you remember that to!