Barcode Scanner: Why all the permissions??

[Phaang]

Anyone else nervous about Barcode Scanner and its access to so many permissions? Your personal information; Network communication; Storage; Hardware controls; System tools. I understand the need to access storage and hardware, but personal information, and system tools? I'm most concerned about reading/writing contact data. What's that for? Browser history is for marketing I guess. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but why would this program need all this access? I'd delete it, but my grocery shopping program needs it for scanning, and my daughter's MyTouch came with it in ROM.

what are everyone else's thoughts on this?

 

[capnhowdy18]

The Barcode scanner lets you create a QRcode for your contact information. It also lets you save contacts from other peoples QRcode. This is why it wants contact information.

 

[EvilMonkey]

Yeah, it's now pretty common (well, somewhat common) for people to have these codes on their business cards now. I know I do. Scan it, it creates a contact for you.

Of course, I'm in the tech-industry, so I probably see it more than your average person off the street would since I exchange business cards about 5 times a day with other tech people, and I probably see these codes on about 25% of them, give or take. Although explaining what it is to the other 75% is annoying.