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Researchers Identify 44 Trackers in More Than 300 Android Apps (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: A collaborative effort between the Yale Privacy Lab and Exodus Privacy has shed light on dozens of invasive trackers that are embedded within Android apps and record user activity, sometimes without user consent. The results of this study come to show that the practice of collecting user data via third-party tracking code has become rampant among Android app developers and is now on par with what's happening on most of today's popular websites. The two investigative teams found tracking scripts not only in lesser known Android applications, where one might expect app developers to use such practices to monetize their small userbases, but also inside highly popular apps -- such as Uber, Twitter, Tinder, Soundcloud, or Spotify. The Yale and Exodus investigation resulted in the creation of a dedicated website that now lists all apps using tracking code and a list of trackers, used by these apps. In total, researchers said they identified 44 trackers embedded in over 300 Android apps.
I'm not sure what version of Android you're talking about, but granular permissions have been available for some time now.
My current phone is a OnePlus 3T and running Android 8.0.0 with the September 1, 2017 patch level. Yes, I know that is a very recent version of Android, but much of this was introduced earlier.
I can go into Settings --> Apps and from there, view and control app permissions by permission or by app. That is, I can see every app that has access to something like SMS or my camera. Or, I can go in and see what permissions a specific app has. In both views, I can toggle specific permissions on and off.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Why mention this if you're not even going to link to it?! Here's the URL that should have been plastered in the summary, and made more visible in TFA