What is READ_PHONE_STATE needed for?

[IzzySoft]

My scanner just got additional checks implemented, and promptly reported a bunch of "potential dangerous permissions" found. While I added most of them to your app's allow-list immediately (as they are covered by the purpose of your app), one questionable candidate remained: you certainly do not backup/restore the phone state 🙈 So what for does your app need READ_PHONE_STATE?

Thanks in advance for clarification!

[mrrfv]

The READ_PHONE_STATE permission isn't defined in the app's AndroidManifest.xml, so it could just be automatically granted/assigned by Android for compatibility with older OS versions, or Flutter's work. I'll look deeper into this next weekend.

[IzzySoft]

Thanks! A good guess would be one of those wide-spread instructions to use that to "stop work" on incoming phone calls (which could be achieved by listening to the AudioFocusChanged broadcast as well – a less known, but also less intrusive variant). I could see that it would not be ideal to deal with e.g. call logs when a call is incoming/in progress.

As your app already deals with all other call data anyhow, the "privacy effect" READ_PHONE_STATE adds should be minimal, though – but as my scanner popped it up I thought it cannot hurt to make sure.