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Android 4.4 Disables SD Card Access for Apps

posted by Dopefish on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the my-way-or-the-highway dept.
quadrox writes:

"It used to be possible for Android apps to access any kind of storage on an android device through the WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission. Writing to the SD card is useful for many different kinds of apps, e.g. file managers or cloud storage synchronization. However, the latest version of Android will no longer allow apps to write anywhere on external storage media, instead apps will only be allowed to access app-specific folders on SD cards. Android Police has an excellent writeup of the changes and the implications for users."

[ED Note: This is bound to irritate power users that rely on their SD cards for additional device storage.]

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hankwang on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:26AM

    by hankwang (100) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:26AM (#2422) Homepage

    I see a lot of resistance here, but I think this is a good thing! I have always felt uncomfortable with the fact that most apps require SD card access and Internet access. Although they have legimate reasons for doing so, it means that any confidential data on the sd card can be leaked by a rogue app.

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  • (Score: 1) by dilbert on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:52AM

    by dilbert (444) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:52AM (#2445)
    Root your phone and install a firewall. Then you can use apps and not allow them network access.

    Not so useful for things that require internet like weather or dropbox, but very useful if they only require internet to serve ads (or upload your contact list).

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by SixGunMojo on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:58AM

    by SixGunMojo (509) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:58AM (#2450)

    This article is about restricting access to the external SD card (think microSD). Most apps on android will always ask for sdcard (internal storage) permissions to create folders to store their data in and internet permission to serve ads