Основные понятия
CO-oPS enables trusted community members to collaboratively review and provide feedback on each other's mobile app installations and permissions, empowering users to make informed privacy and security decisions.
Аннотация
The content discusses the development of a mobile application called CO-oPS (Community Oversight for Privacy and Security) that aims to address the privacy and security challenges faced by smartphone users.
The key highlights are:
Smartphone users often struggle to manage the sensitive information accessed by the numerous mobile apps they install, due to a lack of technical expertise and knowledge about mobile privacy.
CO-oPS allows trusted community members to review the apps installed and permissions granted on each other's phones, and provide feedback to one another regarding their privacy behaviors.
The app includes features such as "Community Apps" to view apps installed across the community, "Own Apps" to hide apps from others, "App Permissions" to see how permissions are granted or denied, "Community Members" to interact with others, "Individual Apps" to explore a specific member's apps, and a "Community Feed" for discussion.
The system architecture of CO-oPS involves a native Android front-end and a hybrid back-end using Firebase cloud services and NodeJS servers, with APIs for app scraping, device information, and permission management.
While the app provides benefits like collaborative privacy management and personal privacy control, it also has limitations such as the lack of permission recommendations and usability issues in grouping apps by permissions. Future work aims to address these limitations.
Статистика
85% of US citizens own smartphones.
77% of smartphone owners reported downloading and installing mobile apps.
Many mobile apps secretly gather users' sensitive information without consent.
Цитаты
"Smartphone users install numerous mobile apps that require access to different information from their devices. Much of this information is very sensitive, and users often struggle to manage these accesses due to their lack of tech expertise and knowledge regarding mobile privacy."
"People also often learn about privacy and security from others in their social network, and this indirect learning eventually influences them to change their privacy behavior."