I am fully aware of what vpn services to use and not. I am not using Express VPN, I am simply doing research for a master thesis, when I came across these results from Express VPN. If you have any ideas or corrections, please let me know why a VPN provider would need to have access to these permissions.

Screenshot is from Exodus service, which let’s you view what exactly perimissions and trackers each app uses. You can check out the results and the tool for yourself here: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.expressvpn.vpn/latest/

Link to Image

  • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    1 year ago

    Camera could be taking pictures of QR codes to make it easier to set up a VPN.

    Bluetooth could be integration with things like Yubikeys for authentication.

    Dunno if that’s what they’re actually for, though.

    • BuddyTheBeefalo@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      Best practices would not require camera permissions to scan qr codes.

      Scan barcodes

      Android includes support for the Google Code Scanner API, powered by Google Play services, which allows you to decode barcodes without declaring any camera permissions. This API helps preserve user privacy and makes it less likely that you need to create a custom UI for your barcode-scanning use case.

      The API scans the barcode and only returns the scan results to your app. Images are processed on-device, and Google doesn’t store any data or scan results.

      https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/minimize-permission-requests

      • ultratiem@lemmy.ca
        2·
        1 year ago

        I’m going to assume they didn’t implement this because money. Their app runs on everything, from iOS to Android to Windows. Cost savings they likely just flipped camera permissions and didn’t care about small edge cases like these.

        With that said, Mullvad is a million times better, cheaper and doesn’t require even an email or account creation to use. They created a system that effectively anonymizes the user before they even subscribe.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 year ago

        To be fair, they didn’t offer that level of granular control for a while.
        If you’re a company with development prioritization that makes it difficult to say “we need to take a few weeks of not working of things that make money to reimplement something we already have that works, because of best practices that don’t make us any money” then it can be really difficult to make changes like that.