Rovio explains the new permission that Angry Birds Seasons requires

Angry Birds Seasons just got the Winter/Christmas update called "Wreck the Halls" but along with the new update came some new permissions you had to agree to which seemed to have ruffled the feathers or quite a few Angry Birds fans. So to ease the massive, Rovio explained what they were for.

Here is the official statement received from Rovio over the new permissions when contacted by Android Central:

On Android, the Angry Birds game itself asks only for the permission to use the Internet. Versions of the game that include advertisements, support for in-app purchases, or both, require additional permissions. The ones that might concern our customers the most are coarse location, phone state and SMS related permission.

Coarse Location:
Coarse location is used to target advertisements geographically, for example to avoid showing Chinese advertisements in the USA and vice-versa. Android also allows finer location discovery, but we have decided not to enable it for advertisement purposes.

Phone State Permissions:
The phone state permission is used to identify devices in order to implement advertisement frequency capping and targeting. Basically the aim is to avoid a situation where our customer has to view the same advertisement too many times on the device in question.

SMS related permissions:
SMS related permissions allow in-app purchases, where available. For example the Mighty Eagle, to be securely billed on the device owner’s phone bill.

So there you have it in case you were wondering. It's mostly related to advertising stuff and in-app billing for the Mighty Eagle. Given the massive news coverage CIQ seems to be getting these days, it's not surprising a few people are a bit weary of permissions that don't immediately make sense. It's alright though, you're still safe.

Website Referenced: Android Central