scholarly journals Session Fingerprinting in Android via Web-to-App Intercommunication

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efthimios Alepis ◽  
Constantinos Patsakis
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Context Awareness ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Web Pages ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Everyday Lives

The extensive adoption of mobile devices in our everyday lives, apart from facilitating us through their various enhanced capabilities, has also raised serious privacy concerns. While mobile devices are equipped with numerous sensors which offer context-awareness to their installed apps, they can also be exploited to reveal sensitive information when correlated with other data or sources. Companies have introduced a plethora of privacy invasive methods to harvest users’ personal data for profiling and monetizing purposes. Nonetheless, up till now, these methods were constrained by the environment they operate, e.g., browser versus mobile app, and since only a handful of businesses have actual access to both of these environments, the conceivable risks could be calculated and the involved enterprises could be somehow monitored and regulated. This work introduces some novel user deanonymization approaches for device and user fingerprinting in Android. Having Android AOSP as our baseline, we prove that web pages, by using several inherent mechanisms, can cooperate with installed mobile apps to identify which sessions operate in specific devices and consequently further expose users’ privacy.

Privacy Concerns and Mobile App Store

2021 ◽  
pp. 2150019
Author(s):  
Brenda Mak ◽  
Leigh Jin
Keyword(s):  
Purchase Intention ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Smart Phone ◽  
User Acceptance ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
App Store ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Share Information

Mobile apps have been transforming how individuals and organizations share information and conduct business. This research studies the relationships among user readiness factors, privacy concerns, and user acceptance of mobile app stores. A survey was conducted among college smart phone users. Results indicate that the privacy concerns construct has a direct negative effect on purchase intention of mobile apps in the app store. In addition, user readiness has a direct positive effect on attitudes to the app store, and a net positive effect on purchase intention of apps in the app store. Implications of our findings were discussed.

Analysis and Resolution of Semantic Ambiguity of Toggle Buttons by Standardizing the Design in Software GUI and Mobile Apps

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Hongyu Guo ◽  
Amjad Nusayr ◽  
Wen-Chen Hu
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Semantic Ambiguity ◽  
Design Standards ◽  
Action Semantics

Toggle buttons are intuitive gadgets widely used in software GUI design and mobile app interfaces with increasing popularity on mobile devices. However, the current practice of toggle button design is prone to semantic ambiguity, which causes confusions to the users. This paper presents an analysis of the various paradigms of toggle button design in the current practice and provides a resolution of the sematic ambiguities by proposing a set of design standards regarding toggle buttons. State semantics and action semantics are distinguished and it is advocated that state semantics should be used in lieu of action semantics.

scholarly journals Parents welcome follow-up using mobile devices: A survey of acceptability at an Australian tertiary paediatric centre

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry E Smallbone ◽  
Thomas FE Drake-Brockman ◽  
Britta S von Ungern-Sternberg
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Electronic Communication ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Paediatric Population ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Success Rates ◽  
Online Forms ◽  
Almost All ◽  
To Receive

Follow-up for ongoing management and monitoring of patients is important in clinical practice and research. While common, telephone follow-up is resource intensive and, in our experience, yields low success rates. Electronic communication using mobile devices including smartphones and tablets can provide efficient alternatives — including SMS (text), online forms and mobile apps. To assess attitudes towards electronic follow-up, we surveyed 642 parents and carers at Perth Children’s Hospital, targeting demographics, device ownership and attitudes towards electronic follow-up. Mobile phone ownership was effectively universal. Almost all respondents were happy to communicate electronically with the hospital. Promisingly, 93.2% of respondents were happy to receive follow-up SMSs from the hospital and 80.3% were happy to reply to SMS questions. There was less enthusiasm regarding other modalities, with 59.9% happy to use a website and 69.0% happy to use a mobile app. The results support the introduction of electronic communication for follow-up in our paediatric population.

scholarly journals Mobile Apps in Daily Learning Activities

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo Damyanov ◽  
Nikolay Tsankov
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Educational Games ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
School Education ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Smart Devices ◽  
Single Person ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Main Determinants

<span>The use of mobile devices is increasing in daily learning activities, providing single-person use combined with interactive learning materials, simulations, voice recognition and educational games. Mobile app stores bring to learners a large amount of mobile applications, but their value and effectiveness to support these learning activities is far from being adequately studied.</span><br /><span>In this paper, we present our recent study related to the opportunities for smart devices to be used in school education, outlining the main obstacles and challenges. The subject of the research is students' interest in the use of multimedia mobile devices for educational purposes. The aim of the study is to establish the main determinants for the complete and purposeful application of smart devices in school education.</span>

Mobile Apps in Open Educational Resources

2020 ◽  
pp. 489-507
Author(s):  
Ying Xiu ◽  
Jose L. Fulgencio ◽  
Tutaleni I. Asino ◽  
Alesha D. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Digital Divide ◽  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Mobile Learning ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Desktop Computers

Globally, those who have traditionally been adversely impacted by the digital divide due to lack of access to computing technologies such as desktop computers, are also the ones who have been shown to have high adoption of mobile devices. If open educational resources (OER) are to have the envisaged wide impact, it is necessary to look at the role mobile applications and mobile app markets play in the OER movement. In this chapter, we link mobile applications and OER and discuss the role mobile app markets play in facilitating open-access learning initiatives. This is done by exploring OER and mobile learning definitions, benefits, and barriers; and comparing and contrasting mobile apps across a set of variables including purpose and resource format.

scholarly journals Losing Control to Data-Hungry Apps: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Mobile App Privacy

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petter Bae Brandtzaeg ◽  
Antoine Pultier ◽  
Gro Mette Moen
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Data Sharing ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Third Party ◽  
User Survey ◽  
Privacy Policies ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach

Personal data from mobile apps are increasingly impacting users’ lives and privacy perceptions. However, there is a scarcity of research addressing the combination of (1) individual perceptions of mobile app privacy, (2) actual dataflows in apps, and (3) how such perceptions and dataflows relate to actual privacy policies and terms of use in mobile apps. To address these limitations, we conducted an innovative mixed-methods study including a representative user survey in Norway, an analysis of personal dataflows in apps, and content analysis of privacy policies of 21 popular, free Android mobile apps. Our findings show that more than half the respondents in the user survey repeatedly had refrained from downloading or using apps to avoid sharing personal data. Our analysis of dataflows applied a novel methodology measuring activity in the apps over time (48 hr). The investigation showed that 19 of the 21 apps investigated transmitted personal data to a total of approximately 600 different primary and third-party domains. From an European perspective, it is particularly noteworthy that most of these domains were associated with tech companies in the United States, where privacy laws are less strict than companies operating from Europe. The investigation further revealed that some apps by default track and share user data continuously, even when the app is not in use. For some of these, the terms of use provided with the apps did not inform the users about the actual tracking practice. A comparison of terms of use as provided in the studied apps with actual person dataflows as identified in the analysis disclosed that three of the apps shared data in violation with their provided terms of use. A possible solution for the mobile app industry, to strengthen user trust, is privacy by design through opt-in data sharing with the service and third parties and more granular information on personal data sharing practices. Also, based on the findings from this study, we suggest specific visualizations to enhance transparency of personal dataflows in mobile apps. A methodological contribution is that a mixed-methods approach strengthens our understanding of the complexity of privacy issues in mobile apps.

scholarly journals How Dangerous Are Your Smartphones? App Usage Recommendation with Privacy Preserving

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konglin Zhu ◽  
Xiaoman He ◽  
Bin Xiang ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Achille Pattavina
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
User Preference ◽  
Mobile Users ◽  
User Privacy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Privacy Leakage ◽  
Privacy Violation

With the rapid proliferation of mobile devices, explosive mobile applications (apps) are developed in the past few years. However, the functions of mobile apps are varied and the designs of them are not well understood by end users, especially the activities and functions related to user privacy. Therefore, understanding how much danger of mobile apps with respect to privacy violation to mobile users is becomes a critical issue when people use mobile devices. In this paper, we evaluate the mobile app privacy violation of mobile users by computing the danger coefficient. In order to help people reduce the privacy leakage, we combine both the user preference to mobile apps and the privacy risk of apps and propose a mobile app usage recommendation method named AppURank to recommend the secure apps with the same function as the “dangerous” one for people use. The evaluation results show that our recommendation can reduce the privacy leakage by 50%.

Datenschutz und Smartphone-Nutzung im Konflikt?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anke Dieckhoff
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Smartphone Apps ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Fitness Tracker ◽  
Self Protection

Smartphones have become a common companion in our everyday lives. Mobile apps can be used to install various functions. For example, it can be used as an MP3 player, navigation device, or fitness tracker. Communication via instant messengers and social networks now also takes place on smartphones and has largely replaced the usual forms of communication. The mostly free applications are profitable for providers primarily because they can process a large amount of personal data. This enables the creation of profiles and the analysis of behavioural patterns. Smartphone users are therefore usually faced with the choice of accepting these processing options or dispensing with the respective application. The work deals with data protection problems of smartphone apps and also presents possibilities for self-protection available to smartphone users.

scholarly journals A Mobile Application Recommendation Framework by Exploiting Personal Preference with Constraints

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konglin Zhu ◽  
Zexuan Liu ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Xinyu Gu
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Mobile Device ◽  
Mobile Applications ◽  
Mobile Application ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Network Data ◽  
Mobile Data ◽  
Personal Preference ◽  
Battery Power

Explosive mobile applications (Apps) are proliferating with the popularity of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets). These Apps are developed to satisfy different function needs of users. Majority of existing App Stores have difficulty in recommending proper Apps for users. Therefore, it is of significance to recommend mobile Apps for users according to personal preference and various constraints of mobile devices (e.g., battery power). In this paper, we propose a mobile App recommendation framework by incorporating different requirements from users. We exploit modern portfolio theory (MPT) to combine the popularity of mobile Apps, personal preference, and mobile device constraints for mobile App recommendation. Based on this framework, we discuss the recommendation approaches by constraints of phone power and limited mobile data plan. Extensive evaluations show that the proposed mobile App recommendation framework can well adapt to power and network data plan constraints. It satisfies the user App preference and mobile device constraints.

scholarly journals Analyzing Remote Server Locations for Personal Data Transfers in Mobile Apps

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mojtaba Eskandari ◽  
Bruno Kessler ◽  
Maqsood Ahmad ◽  
Anderson Santana de Oliveira ◽  
Bruno Crispo
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Data Transfer ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Analysis Tool ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Almost All

Abstract The prevalence of mobile devices and their capability to access high speed internet has transformed them into a portable pocket cloud interface. Being home to a wide range of users’ personal data, mobile devices often use cloud servers for storage and processing. The sensitivity of a user’s personal data demands adequate level of protection at the back-end servers. In this regard, the European Union Data Protection regulations (e.g., article 25.1) impose restriction on the locations of European users’ personal data transfer. The matter of concern, however, is the enforcement of such regulations. The first step in this regard is to analyze mobile apps and identify the location of servers to which personal data is transferred. To this end, we design and implement an app analysis tool, PDTLoc (Personal Data Transfer Location Analyzer), to detect violation of the mentioned regulations. We analyze 1, 498 most popular apps in the EEA using PDTLoc to investigate the data recipient server locations. We found that 16.5% (242) of these apps transfer users’ personal data to servers located at places outside Europe without being under the control of a data protection framework. Moreover, we inspect the privacy policies of the apps revealing that 51% of these apps do not provide any privacy policy while almost all of them contact the servers hosted outside Europe.

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