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Zdefense by ZStudio is being given away today in the Amazon Appstore. I don’t normally post on Amazon’s “free apps of the day” but I had so much fun with this one, I figured I’d let y’all know. Essentially what we have here is yet another tower defense game (the Android Market is FULL of them) and even though I wasn’t expecting much, I was pleasantly surprised. Graphics have a sort of “Tron” feel to them with bright colors and smooth animations. Gameplay was surprisingly more complex than your average TD game which is what really drew me in. The game is normally $1.99 in the Android Market so this is quite the steal. Once you check it out be sure to leave a comment and tell me what you think!
Chris, do you do ZERO research for posts? Please read the reviews — this is a stolen version of Hex Defense which for some reason requires access to account details. i.e. it’s malware.
1st off. I researched the app, read the reviews in BOTH the Amazon Appstore and Android Market. 5 star reviews across the board. Downloaded then played it for a few minutes before writing up this post. How is that “ZERO research?”
But you’re going as far as to say an app featured on Amazon’s front page is malware? You shouldn’t make a claim like that unless you’re 100% sure.
According to the developer, “Discover known accounts permission is used by OpenFeint to let users not have to type the email address in when creating an account.”
There’s your research. =p
Yeah, I am quite suspicious of this app. It shouldn’t be able to take over your device or accounts or anything, but they could very easily collect account info, letting them potentially sell your e-mail address, phone number, etc. I’m not saying it does that, but it certainly could.
I mean, there’s a lot of apps that could do that. Did you see Hex Defense’s permissions?
“READ PHONE STATE AND IDENTITY
Allows the application to access the phone features of the device. An application with this permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the like.”
Sounds pretty scary too… o_O
There are indeed a lot of apps that can do that, and I’m certain that at least one of the apps I’ve downloaded in the past (from the Android Marketplace) has, resulting in unsolicited spam and even text messages. It’s not easy to know which may or may not take advantage of permissions like that.
It may not even be the developer’s fault sometimes. They could use a third party API that does it without them even knowing.
It’s sadly something completely unavoidable, even with iOS. The convenience of making the information available also makes it vulnerable. The only thing you can do is be wary of apps that are suspicious. Copying existing apps is a little suspicious.
I mean, the apps aren’t IDENTICAL just very similar. Like all those dang jumping games in the Market… Lol
Yeah, don’t install it people, get the original: HexDefense! Or even better if you own an iPhone geoDefense, the original original :)
The original original of the original.
Account is for open feint. Not a fan of feint but it needs account permissions. It’s not malware.
The “READ PHONE STATE AND IDENTITY” could be used just to determine if a phone call is coming in and allow the app to pause itself or stop playing music. It doesn’t necessarily mean it will read all your account info.