[2021] What is the contact permission for?

Here is some technical background information:

We upgraded to the Android SDK 29 with v16.20 to address some bugs and also the OS prompting that the app was out of date.

On Samsung Phones we need access to the “GET_ACCOUNTS” permission to verify purchases on the Galaxy Store. This is a permission we have always asked for on all devices at install time. With v16.20 and the new Android SDK however we only need to ask on Samsung phones using runtime permissions.

The Android SDK as of version 23 lumps “GET_ACCOUNTS” into the permission group of “contacts” so us asking for the “GET_ACCOUNTS” permissions results in the player now facing a prompt for “contacts”.

Fortnite is NOT asking the OS for access to your contacts. You can verify this yourself by checking the APK manifest with tools such as Google’s Classy Shark.

Fortnite is not accessing your contacts nor has it ever done so.

Fun fact, we verified this by checking the manifests of our 8509 Android builds :-)

Daniel Vogel (COO, Epic Games)