My smartphone gave a warning this morning that an application tried to access something it shouldn’t have. An investigation began and I opened up the list of applications(apps) to see if anything looked suspicious, On my Android I opened Settings -More -Application Manager. I suspected many were installed and I was surprised to find 55! This was under the Downloaded category which includes the ones I downloaded from the play store and the built-in ones with updates- so basically everything. I tried removing some of the built-in apps and only updates could be removed. I did find some under-utilized apps which I did remove. Although I could have completely removed FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google My Business and others, I left the heavily used ones . An app I never heard of was listed called Paper Artist which I turned off. It warned that other apps may use it and problems may happen.
I would encourage you to review your phones apps monthly and remove ones you’ve downloaded and don’t use any longer. Keeping your smartphone’s apps lean may help you avoid problems.