I used to believe that and installed CM 12.1 on my phone only to find out that the restrictions don&#x27;t really work. Whatsapp was able to read my messages (automatic phone verify) when I had disabled the access. Digging around I found out this is the case even with XPrivacy (there are open issues on github) which is supposed to be more extensive. There are some situations when the blocks aren&#x27;t enforced at all (like some native calls). I got a nexus 5x, android 6 permissions feature actually works.