“CIAmedia's unique ad targeting technology knows which businesses, phone numbers or even local contacts a user is calling. They even boast about it on their website: I say aptly named, since they literally track who you call and harvest the entirety of your phone’s data, whether it be your location, or call logs to show you targeted ads! The Caller ID service is provided by a company that’s unfortunately but aptly named CIAmedia (not affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency). I decided to take a look at the legal disclaimer and this is what I found out. When the call ends, it serves up some advertising (so much for “no ads”): This is what happens when you get a call with this app installed (I’ve blurred out the name and phone number): Furthermore, they flat out lied when they claim in their description that their app is “Advertisement free!” They didn’t opt for ordinary and non-intrusive advertising because the revenue they stood to gain paled in comparison to the Caller ID system that they chose to implement. After some snooping around it turns out that the developers were both greedy and misleading. If they were struggling for revenue, why wouldn’t they simply add advertising to the app? With the millions of users that they had, advertising should definitely have provided a liveable wage. If you don't like the feature you can always turn it off in the settings.” So why would they request so many permissions?Īfter some thought, it was clearly to generate more revenue which the developers themselves confirmed: “.it helps us fund further development of the app. I know for a fact that none of these are necessary for a calculator app.
So I looked at the permissions that they requested: They need access to your entire contacts book, they need to know your precise location using GPS, they need to be able to read all your call history and they need to read your entire storage.
I thought to myself, “why in the world would a scientific calculator provide Caller ID?” I found out that they had added a new feature: Caller ID. Recently I was scoping out our competition and stumbled upon an app named “ Scientific Calculator” by Sappalodapps. Nonetheless, all the following is factually correct and referenced for your convenience. Disclaimer: I’m developing a competing application, Natural Scientific Calculator so I might be a little am biased.
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