The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized Google Thursday for...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized Google Thursday for removing App Ops, “an extremely important app privacy feature,” from its Android 4.4.2 operating system update last week. The App Ops feature allowed users to install applications and directly control whether the app could collect potentially sensitive data like user location and a user’s contacts, EFF said. The group said Google told it that Google had released the App Ops feature by accident in its Android 4.3 update -- “that it was experimental, and that it could break some of the apps policed by it. We are suspicious of this explanation, and do not think that it in any way justifies removing the feature rather than improving it.” EFF called on Google to restore the App Ops feature in order to restore the belief that the company cares about “this massive privacy problem” (http://bit.ly/1bANsRz). Google did not comment.