Why the list is longer than you think.
Every app asks for something the first time it needs it, a map app for location, a messaging app for the microphone, a photo editor for the camera roll, and most people tap allow without much thought because the request arrives exactly when it is useful. A year of ordinary use later, the full list of what has been granted is usually longer and older than anyone remembers agreeing to.
None of this is unusual or careless. It is simply how permission requests are designed to work, one small yes at a time, and the only fix is an occasional pass through the full list rather than trying to remember each request as it happens.
Finding the full list.
On an iPhone, Settings, Privacy and Security lists every permission type, location, contacts, photos, microphone, camera, and tapping into any one of them shows every app currently holding it, sorted in one place rather than scattered across each app's own settings. On Android, the equivalent sits under Settings, Privacy, Permission Manager, organised the same way, by permission type first and app second.
This app-second view is the useful one for an audit. Reviewing an app's own settings page one at a time takes an evening; reviewing location access for every app in a single list takes about ninety seconds.
The location question worth asking twice.
Location access usually offers three answers rather than two: never, while using the app, or always. Always is the one worth questioning for anything beyond a genuine navigation or ride-hailing app, since it means the app can note where the phone is even when it is closed and sitting in a pocket, not only at the moment it is open on screen. Very few apps need that, a map app for an unfamiliar city does, a weather app usually does not.
Switching a permission from always to while using rarely breaks anything noticeable. The map still finds you the moment you open it; it simply stops keeping a note the rest of the day.
Photos, contacts and the microphone.
Photo access has a useful middle setting on newer phones, selected photos rather than the entire library, worth choosing for any app that only ever needs one or two images rather than a running view of everything on the roll. Contacts access is worth a harder look than most people give it, since an app with full contact access can, depending on its own policy, see every number and name saved on the phone, not only the ones relevant to what it actually does.
Microphone access is the one most people trust by habit rather than by checking, granted once for a voice message or a call and rarely revisited. An app that genuinely needs it, a messaging app, a video app, keeps it; an old game or a rarely opened utility holding the same permission is worth switching off.
Two permissions people forget to check.
Notification access, an Android specific permission, is worth its own look, since an app granted it can read the content of every notification that arrives on the phone, not only its own, a genuinely broad permission originally built for smartwatch companion apps and similar tools that legitimately need it. Very few apps require this, and it is worth listing exactly which ones hold it under Settings, Apps, Special Access, Notification Access, removing it from anything that is not a watch app, a notification organiser, or something you specifically chose it for.
Bluetooth and local network access are the quieter pair, granted almost automatically to apps that pair with headphones or a smart device, and occasionally used by retail apps to detect nearby beacons in a shop or a venue. Neither is usually a serious concern on its own, but both are worth including in the same pass through the permission list, since they are easy to forget precisely because the request rarely feels like it is about privacy at the time.
A short routine worth repeating.
A full audit takes under ten minutes and is worth doing every few months, or immediately after installing several new apps in a short space of time, since that is when the list grows fastest. Sort by permission rather than by app, question anything marked always for location, and revoke access from anything you genuinely have not opened recently rather than trying to remember why it was granted in the first place.
This matters most for a phone used for travel planning, where a map, a translation app and a ride-hailing app can each quietly hold always-on location at once. Ahead of a travel companion trip to Schiphol or further afield, a quick pass through the location list is worth doing the evening before rather than at the gate.
What this means for a booking.
A companion filed under tall or auburn and red is confirmed through the same three line message whichever apps on your phone hold whichever permissions, since a booking travels through the thread alone rather than through anything else installed on the device. The booking page covers exactly what that message needs to include. What a careful audit actually changes is simply how much of your ordinary movement a half-forgotten app has been quietly noting in the background, worth tidying up for its own sake regardless of any evening it does or does not surround.