Natural language search is something the software industry is watching and operating systems for a long time. And in general, this is something to be very grateful for, as it makes interacting with apps and devices significantly easier. Anyone who has read a software license knows the barrier I’m talking about and how discouraging it can be for many people who accept it without understanding anything.

At a lower level than licenses, of course, but This problem extends to many other areas.and the problem is that these are spaces in which it is essential that the user fully understands what he is reading, because these are very important aspects related to operations, conditions and safety. And while progress has undoubtedly been made in this regard over the years, there is still a long way to go.

A clear example that concerns us today is an example App Store App permission lists, especially from Google Play. True, for many users this list, as it turns out today, is quite clear and understandable, and what is better, it has a standardized format, that is, a similar format is used in the descriptions of all applications.

However, many users with little or no technical background such a list can be somewhat confusing, the reason why the search engine company decided to make a change in this regard. So as we can read in Ars Technica, Google Play hides the app’s permissions to display developer-written descriptions instead about the permissions that the application needs and the reason for the need.

It is not yet clear whether this replacement is complete, i.e. whether the permission list disappears completely or, on the contrary, remains in the background and users who wish can look into it, which is a format that I think would be ideal. And it is that it sounds good in theory, but either there is a strict control to ensure that the descriptions correspond to reality, or this show of trust in the honesty of the developers can become a big security problem if some of them choose not to inform enough about the permissions, which individual applications will use. And yes, I definitely mean malware.