Google has denied phone number access permisison for all call recorders

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Short summary

Google has a new permission policy and denied Call Log permission for all call recording apps including ACR.

Call recording apps will have to remove CALL LOG permission by 9th of March 2019.This means that they will not be able to get the number of the active call.

This change will not affect previous recordings or call recording in general.

However, it will cripple many advanced features of ACR Pro and Free depending on knowing the phone number. For example, Excluded/Included numbers, recording by contacts will not be available.

We have given our 6 years to ACR and Google Play Store only to have it crippled by this policy. It breaks our hearts for it to be crippled like that. Unfortunately, we have no other way but to comply with the Play Store's new policy.

This is Google's policy and only applies to the Google Play store. If your phone has different app store(s) you can look for fully functional version of ACR called "ACR Unchained" on other app stores such as Huawei's App Gallery and Samsung's Galaxy Store. It has permissions for accessing phone number during the call. Unfortunately Google Play Store policy prevents us from providing direct apk downloads from our website.

ACR Unchained will accept Pro Key as usual

Other call recording apps seem to have permission

There might be few apps that can get access to incoming and outgoing number during the call. They might not have read the new policy properly or prefer not to comply.

An app can get access to the phone number without the Call Log permission. This is due to a bug/feature present in all versions of Android up to P/9.

However; if you carefully read the policy, you will see that it clearly states the following: You may not use alternative methods (including other permissions, APIs, or third-party sources) to derive data attributed to the above permissions.

Google clearly knows the workaround and prevent it from being used to derive the phone number. While those apps may continue to function normally they risk being permanently removed from the Google Play store.

How about becoming default dialer

We have explored this option. It requires a lot of change in ACR's code base. Together with Android 9 blocking call recording we believe it does not worth the effort and time we would put in to turn ACR from a call recorder to default phone dialer app.

Details

In October 2018 Google has introduced a new policy.They want all apps which requests PROCESS_OUTGOING_CALLS and READ_CALL_LOG permissions to get written approval from Google Play Policy Team in order to use those permissions or be banned from the Play Store.

See

As you can see below, they have listed Call Recording as "disallowed" usage.

Regardless, we have requested exclusion. But, received negative response that says "call recording" apps are not allowed to ask these permissions.

This means that ACR and all other call recording apps, as well as many other utility apps will not able to get phone numbers during the call anymore.

ACR will simply have no way of knowing which number you have called or which number called you. All calls will be from and to "Unknown" numbers even if they are your own contacts.

What did they say?

Thank you for contacting the Google Play team. We have received the following information in the Permissions Declaration Form you submitted:

Q1 - Core use case(s)
Call recording

Q2 - Declared permission(s)
READ_CALL_LOG
PROCESS_OUTGOING_CALLS

I've reviewed your request and found that your app, Call Recorder - ACR, com.nll.acr, does not qualify for use of the requested permissions for the following reasons:

We evaluated your declared feature "Call recording", however we determined it is not eligible for exceptions...

Can't you just appeal it?

We have and received the same answer. Permission request was denied again.

What's next

We will add and and extra feature where you can manually add contact or number to the recording.

We hope to publish a version of ACR without these limitations called "ACR Unchained" to alternative stores such as Huawei and Samsung, which do not have permission limitations.

What can users do to help?

There are few open cases about this in Android issue tracker.
For example:

It is for mainly developers but any one with a Google account can comment. We have observed many users of many other affected apps do.

I am a paid user. I want features I've paid for!

This is out of our control. We have no saying in this decision. All apps that are avalible on the Google Play Store must comply with their policies.

Since we have no control over this issue and it affects free and pro versions of ACR as well as any other call recording app that is available on the market, our refund policy does not change. Please read our terms and conditions here