Samsung Health now requires Permissions for access to Private Phone data for absolutely no reason besides invasion of privacy!

[Rayn1]

WARNING!!!! Do NOT give consent to any app, including the new Samsung Health app, to snatch your phone number (or camera or microphone) when it is not necessary. This is a prime example of an attempt at invasion of privacy.  Over the last couple of years I have had to put up with a forced OS update from Samsung that has crippled various features of my Galaxy S8 that I PAID FOR and now they are using the Samsung Health app as a spy vector to identify you and your activities. 

The "Israeli" spyware firm NGO has agents inside various high tech companies like Samsung and are likely using the Samsung Health app as another vector to identify you in order to match your identity with your phone/GPS activities (which the Samsung Health app does keep track of).  More info at these links:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

https://citizenlab.ca/2018/09/hide-and-seek-tracking-nso-groups-pegasus-spyware-to-operations-in-45-...

This is SERIOUS folks! People, including media company professionals/journalists have been murdered using the  information stolen by NGO's Pegasus spyware.

I heard one person in the forums here mention that you can "click th Continue button"  to grant the Samsung health app permission and then immediately disable the permission after activating the health app, but this is NOT a solution! As soon as you click the Continue button, they have your ID/phone number and the deed is finished.  You can Download the Google Health app instead but unfortunately Samsung only allows the Samsung Health app to access certain sensors including the Samsung phones built in Heart Monitor, but you can use other third party apps which use the phone's camera to take your pulse instead (if you trust the app's developers)

Granted spyware (including NGO's Pegasus) is generally a potential problem on all Android and iOS smartphones, the Galaxy S8 will be my last Samsung phone due to (1) Samsung's blatant lack of regard for its customers privacy and (2) for the fact that they also disabled various call features during the FORCED Android 9 update without our knowledge or consent: they promised to fix this issue in a future update, but now of course they tell us there will be no future OS updates for the S8 to correct this issue.  

[Ben56]

GDPR is very poorly contrived by the EU and it does nothing to protect people's data besides imply a false sense of security. What did GPDR do to protect millions of people from the Pegasus spyware now running on millions of Android and iPhones?

Even if you were to make the assumption that Samsung is completely trustworthy and every one of its thousands of employees is also trustworthy, (which you shouldn't) you are still at risk of data breaches by hackers, which happen almost every day.

Banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, government agencies are being hacked on a daily basis and leaking the data millions of people stolen by hackers and foreign spy agencies.

Just yesterday, T-mobile leaked the private data of 40 million users to hackers:

today.  https://threatpost.com/t-mobile-40-million-customers-data-stolen/168778/

...And T-mobile is governed by strict EU GPDR guidelines. How did that help these victims?

The unnecessary "Phone permissions" that the Samsung Health App update now requires is still in effect with no update in site to reverse this bone-headed decision (as per their previous feature-crippling updates) and I am now stuck with a Galaxy phone which has not worked for months as far as any of the health features go (which I paid top dollar for) 

Once I'm done with this phone, the replacement won't be a Samsung