I have a crappy Vodacom tablet; to read sms'es, I need to start an app (makes sense) and it insists on permission to access my images (WTF).
I'm not sending images, I'm not receiving images; only thing that comes in is bandwidth warnings. Actually, you should be able to deny individual permissions if you think that you don't need them.
Very tempted to go back to my 5 year old Samsung.