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ga...@gmail.com
Hi, this is not a duplicate issue to
me...@gmail.com
Call recording helps to stop domestic violence. Having a recording of someone threating to kill you if you report them for domestic violence is an important tool for police and prosecutors. Privacy safeguards are important, but not as important as safety.
Description
Fintech companies, especially in developing countries, are at the forefront of financial inclusion. Alternative lending is allowing many people, who do not have proper credit histories, to get loans. Fintech companies are able to lend to this population by using alternate data to create a credit profile of the user. SMS and Call Log information are a key part of this alternate data.
By analyzing commercial SMS sent to users after a transaction (bank transfer, credit card purchase, ATM withdrawal, ecommerce purchase, etc.) it is possible to understand the user's financial position and spending patterns and hence decide whether to give a loan and how much to lend. This is an alternative to asking the borrowers to submit all this information via some other medium, which would be significantly more time consuming and inefficient and prone to fraud.
Similarly, research has proven that intelligently analyzing calling patterns based on the call log can divulge many clues about a user's personality and genuineness and hence their intention to repay a loan. Refer to the links below:
Google lists "SMS-based financial transactions (e.g., 5 digit messages), and related activity including OTP account verification for financial transactions and fraud detection" as a valid use case for READ_SMS permission. However, it seems giving loans does not qualify under the SMS based financial transactions category as Google is denying this permission to lending apps saying SMS based financial transactions is not core functionality for them.
The Bank for International Settlements in their Quarterly review dated Sep 2018 (
The premier strategy consulting firm Boston Consulting Group, in a report dated July 2018 (
Via its control over the Play Store, Google is the de facto gate keeper of how the vast majority of the world's smartphone users of today and tomorrow use the internet and benefit from it. This comes with great responsibility. While protecting user privacy and information should be an important objective, rules that are set in haste and actually ending up hurting a very large number of economically neglected consumers, does great disservice to this responsibility. Not allowing lending apps to access SMS and Call Log permissions, which effectively will not let these apps lend to otherwise eligible customers is doing exactly this. These consumers, given the option, are currently willingly trading some bits of their personal information to get credit because to them the value of getting the loan significantly exceeds the erosion of privacy from sharing some of their personal information. So Google should think carefully about whether they have the right to prevent users from doing so.
It is our sincere request that for app that have LENDING as their core functionality Google allows access to SMS and Call Log permissions.