The weather app I used sent location data from pretty much everyone who didn't manually go through the effort to opt out to some shady American data broker that got hacked. Most people using the app gave it location permissions because of its ability to warn for rain coming to your precise location with decent accuracy.

Nobody wanted to share their location with these data brokers, but thanks to underfunded privacy watchdogs, you have no idea what happens to any app that you give any kind of permission.

I'd argue it's absolutely ludicrous to give _other people's information_ up to an app (or website). Your contacts contain names, phone numbers, potentially photos and addresses of _other people_.

One of the most enraging things about life since 2005-ish is that no matter how private and careful I am, it doesn't even matter because every other inconsiderate fool I know and interact with will HAPPILY let some random company have access to THEIR contacts--which includes me--in order to play Farmville for a month until they get bored of that and offer up my private information to the next bullshit ad company that asks for their contacts.

It used to frustrate me that people didn't care about their own privacy, because I genuinely didn't want evil people to hurt them. But, it's even more angering that people don't have the common decency to consider whether their friends and family would want them sharing their phone numbers, email addresses, photos of them, etc.

But most of the time it’s really, really not.

Almost never is it useful for an app to have my contacts or location.

That said only on some platforms is it possible to stop a native app from getting them.

Not without my knowledge or your knowledge sure. But I'd bet there's significant percentage of the population who is tired of thinking about permission popups and just hit yes yes YES to get the App started. Especially if it forces retries before going forward.

I think they're counting on these popups wearing people out.

After GDPR made these incessant annoying cookie popups mandatory, I just robotically click any button to dismiss it as fast as possible. Some website could probably write "Give root access" in that box and I'd probably click it without thinking.